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NOTES EROM LIEE 



SEVEN ESSAYS. 



MONEY. 

HUMILITY & INDEPENDENCE. 

WISDOM. 



CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

CHILDREN. 

THE LIFE POETIC. 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND* GREAT. 



BY 



HENRY TAYLOR, 

AUTHOR OP 'PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE. 



From the Third London Edition. 



BOSTON: 
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. 

, MDCCCLIII. 



/ 



V 



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xauKSTON, Tonr.v, axd embpsos, p. inieks. 



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I- 



TO 
THE EARL OF ABERDEEN, K. T. 

ETC. ETC. ETC. 

a:i)fs aSoofe fs JJnscrfbetr, 

WITH 

GREAT RESPECT AND REGARD, 

BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE 



In the year 1836 I published a book called the ' States- 
man,' a title much found fault with at the time, and in truth 
not very judiciously chosen. It contained the views and 
maxims respecting the transaction of public business, which 
twelve years of experience had suggested to me. But my 
experience had been confined within the doors of an office, 
and the book was wanting in that general interest which 
might possibly have been felt in the results of a more exten- 
sive and varied conversancy with public life. Moreover, the 
sub-sarcastic vein in which certain parts of it were written 
was not very well understood, and what was meant for an 
exposure of some of the world's ways was, I believe, very 
generally mistaken for a recommendation of them. I advert, 
now, to this book and its indifferent fortunes, because M'hat- 
ever may have been its demerits, my present work must be 
regarded as to some extent comprehended in the same design, 
— that, namely, of embodying in the form of maxims and 
reflections the immediate results of an attentive observation 
of life, — of official life in the former volume, — of life at 
large in this. For more than twenty years I have been in 
the habit of noting these results as they were thrown up, 
when the facts and occurrences that gave rise to them were 



VI PREFACE. 

fresh in my mind.* A larnre portion of them I would more 
willingly have transfused into dramatic compositions. Year 
after year I have indulged the belief that I might find health, 
leisure, and opportunity for doing so, nor do I yet relinquish 
the hope that I may gain the time for some further efforts of 
that nature before I lose the fliculty. But the years wear 
away, and though I do not hold that youth is the poet's' 
prime, yet I feel that after youth the imagination cannot be 
put on and taken off with the same easy versatility, — that 
a continuous absorption in the dramatic theme is more 
indispensable to its treatment, and that, consequently, 
such pursuits come to be less readily combined with other 
avocations. Other avocations I am unable to discard, and 
lest, therefore, T should never be in a condition to realize a 
better hope, I have put into this prosaic form such of my 
reflections on life as I have thougftt worthy in one way or 
another to be preserved. 

* Some of the notes were originally marlc in verse ; others were, from time 
to time, converted into verse, to serve tlie purposes of dramatic or poetic 
works in progress or in contemplation ; and I have not hesitated to quote the 
verses in illustration of the prose, as often as the versified foiin seemed to give 
a reflection or an ai)horism a better chance of finding a resting-place in the 
meuaory of the reader. 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

MONEY 1 

HUMANITY- AND INDEPENDENCE ....... 29 

CHOICE IN MARRIAGE 43 

WISDOM 74 

CHILDREN 91 

THE LIFE POETIC 109 

THE WAYS OP THE RICH AND GREAT 151 



ESSAYS. 



OF MONEY. 



The philosophy which affects to teach us a con- 
tempt of money, does not run very deep ; for, indeed, 
it ought to be still more clear to the philosopher than 
it is to ordinary men, that there are few things in the 
world of greater importance. And so manifold are 
the bearings of money upon the lives and characters 
of mankind, that an insight which should search out 
the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would 
penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. He 
who knows, like St. Paul, both how to spare and how 
to abound, has a great knowledge : for if we take 
account of all the virtues with which money is mixed 
up, — honesty, justice, generosity, charity, frugality, 
forethought, self-sacrifice, — and of their correlative 
vices, — it is a knowledge which goes near to cover 
the length and breadth of humanity : and a right 
measure and manner in getting, saving, spending, 
1 



'i OF MONEY. 

giving, taking, lending, borrowipg, and bequeathing, 
would almost argue a perfect man. 

First: — As to the getting of money. This in- 
volves dangers which do not belong to the mere 
possession of it. * Blessed is the rich that is found 
without blemish, and hath not gone after gold,' says 
the Son of Sirach ; and again — * He that loveth gold 
shall not be justified, and he that followeth corruption 
shall have enough thereof.' * Yet industry must take 
an interest in its own fruits ; and God has appointed 
that the mass of mankind shall be moved by this 
interest, and have their daily labor sweetened by it ; 
and there may be a blessing even upon the going 
after gold, if it be not whh an inordinate appetite — 
if the gold be not loved for its own sake, and if the 
manner of it be without blemish. But the danger 
arises out of the tendency of the human mind to 
forget the end in the means, and the difficulty of 
going after gold for the love of the benefits which it 
may confer, without going after it also for the mere 
love of getting it and keeping it, which is ' following 
corruption.' It behoves him who is getting money, 
therefore, even more than him who has it by inherit- 
ance, to bear in mind what are the uses of money, 
and what are the proportions and proprieties to be 

* Ecclesiasticus, xxxi. 8. 



OF MONEY. 3 

observed in saving, giving, and spending : for recti- 
tude in the management of money consists in the 
symmetry of these three. 

Sudden and enormous gains ahnost always disturb 
the bahmce : for a man can scarcely change liis scale 
suddenly, and yet hold his proportions : and iKBnce 
proceeds one of the many evils of highly speculative 
commerce, with its abrupt vicissitudes of fortune. 
The man who engages in it can scarcely have any 
fixed and regulated manner of dealing with his net 
income ; he knows not how much he ought to save, 
how much he may permit himself to spend, how 
much he can afford to give : whilst, even if he could 
know, the extreme excitements of fear and hope to 
which he lies open, occupy his mind too much for 
him to give many thoughts to such matters. And if 
what is called bold commercial enterprise be a thing 
to be rejoiced in as promoting the physical well- 
being of mankind, and thereby, perhaps, in the train 
of consequences, their moral interests, it is only 
through that Providence by which good is brought 
out of evil. And the actors in such enterprises, 
when, as is mostly the case, they are merely ' going 
after gold,' and not considering either the physical 
or moral results, are, in their own minds and hearts, 
* following corruption,' and are likely to ' have enough 
thereof.' 



4 OF MONEY. 

A moderated and governed course in the getting 
of money is the more difficult, because this is, of all 
pursuits, that in which a man meets with the greatest 
pressure of competition. So many are putting their 
hearts into this work, that he who keeps his out of it, 
is not unlikely to fare ill in the strife. And for this 
reason it were well for a man, not perhaps altogether 
to abate his desire of gain, (though this should be 
done if it be excessive,) but more assiduously still to 
direct his desires beyond, and purify the desire of 
gain by associating with it the desire to accomplish 
some scheme of beneficent expenditure. And let no 
man imagine that the mere investment for reproduc- 
tion, though economists may justly regard it as bene- 
ficial to mankind, will react upon his own heart for 
good. 

George Herbert is a good counsellor on this head 
of money- getting : — 

' Yet in thy thriving still misdoubt some evil ; 

Lest gaining gain on ihee, and make thee dim 
To all things else. Wealth is the Conjuror's Devil, 

"Whom, when he thinks he hath, the Devil hath him. 
Gold thou may'st safely touch ; but if it stick 
Unto thy hands, it woundeth to the quick.' * 

Secondly : — As to the saving of money. The 
* The Church Porch. 



OF MONEY. 5 

saving, like the getting, should be intelligent of a 
purpose beyond : it should not be saving for saving's 
sake, but for the sake of some worthy object to be 
accomplished by the money saved. And especially 
we are to guard against that accumulative instinct or 
passion which is ready to take possession of all col- 
lectors. 

Some very small portion of a man's income may, 
perhaps, be justifiably saved to make provision against 
undefined and unforeseen contingencies, and also to 
assure himself that he can save. But in the case of 
most men there will be a sufiiciency of distinct and 
definable ends, whether certain or contingent, which 
will not only justify, but enjoin, the laying by of a 
proportion of their income. A young man may very 
well lay by money to enable him to be more free in 
the choice of a wife. A middle-aged man may lay 
it by in order that his old age may have fewer labors 
and cares, or more comforts. A father may lay it 
by for his children. But in all these cases, if the end 
be not kept steadily in view from first to last, and the 
means kept no more than proportionate and subordi- 
nate, there is the risk that the saver may become a 
miser. The young man may grow old without taking 
a wife, and save still when he no longer thinks of 
marrying ; or he may think that what he has saved 
may entitle him to a rich wife, rather than enable him 



b OF MONEY. 

to choose. The middle-aged man may reach old age 
with no disposition to increase his comforts and every 
disposition to increase his hoard. And finally, the 
father, though his motive for saving is the most natural 
and universal, and in general the most warrantable of 
all, may yet be betrayed by the very largeness of the 
allowance which the world makes in such cases, into 
avaricious errors. His case, as being the ^ost com- 
mon, and that in which men are least on their guard, 
deserves to be the more closely considered. 

The prudent parent is less likely to be corrupted 
into a covetous parent, if he be saving for several 
children, than if it be for one only child, or for an 
eldest son : for avarice projects itself more readily in 
the singular number than in the plural ; and saving for 
a provision is always to be distinguished from saving 
for aggrandizement, which is no other than a form' 
of avarice. Saving for an only child or eldest son 
may be defended when the father has means beyond 
the devisable patrimony, and when that devisable pat- 
rimony is insufficient for the station to be inherited 
along with it. But if the patrimony be insufficient, 
and the father have no extrinsic means, he must not 
make it more insufficient in his lifetime, in order that 
it may be less insufficient in his son's : he is not to be 
niggardly in order that his son may be liberal. He 
may, indeed, retrench in matters connected with the 



OF MONEY. 7 

keeping up of appearances — that is, he may osten- 
sibly retire from his station for a time, or for life ; 
but he must not, whilst keeping up the appearances of 
his station, fall short in matters of bounty and libe- 
rality. 

In saving for younger children, the parent has to 
consider what is a competency; and if he be wise, 
and can count upon an average share of health and 
abilities in his younger sons, he will not relieve them 
from the necessity of earning the main part of their 
livelihood ; for unless a man's property be large 
enough to find him an occupation in the manage- 
ment of it, and in the discharge of the duties incident 
to it, (which, generally speaking, can only be the case 
of the eldest son,) it will be essential to his happiness 
that he should have to work for his bread. And it is 
on this fact that the custom of succession, according 
to primogeniture, is to be defended ; for if any one 
is sacrificed by this custom, it is rather the eldest than 
the younger sons ; the eldest being too often pampered 
into self-love, — the most wretched inheritance of all, 
— the younger being trained in self-sacrifice, fortified 
in self-reliance, and through industry and progress 
leading a wiser, a better, a more generous, and a 
happier life. 

How much to save for a daughter, is another ques- 
tion ; and since a woman's life, for the most part, 



8 OF MONEY. 

turns upon her marriage, it is lier matrimonial pros- 
pects which are principally to be regarded. Let not 
her wealth be too tempting : an heiress has a large 
assortment of suitors, and yet an ill choice : and do 
not, if you can help it, let her poverty be an obstruc- 
tion ; for prudent men make good husbands, and in 
many cases a man cannot marry with prudence A\hcre 
there is not the fair facility of a moderate fortune. I 
have hoard, indeed, of a father who stinted his daugh- 
ters' dowries, on purpose that poor men might not be 
able to marry them ; whence he inferred that rich men 
would. He might be mistaken in his inference ; for 
though rich men can afford to marry poor maids, yet 
men are not found to wish less for money because 
they want it less, and in the making of marriages it 
is generally seen that * wealth will after kind.' Even 
if he were not mistaken, however, the calculation was 
but a sordid one at the best ; and, considering how 
many requisites must be combined to make a good 
husband and a happy marriage, the father is likely to 
impose a cruel limitation of choice who needlessly 
adds wealth to the number of essentials. Even the 
marriage which is poor through an improvident choice, 
is less likely to end ill than that which is rich through 
a constrained choice. 

There is yet another domestic object which may be 
a fiiir ground for saving out of a patrimony. One of 



OF MONEY. 9 

the incidents of the law and custom of primogeniture, 
to which our natural feelings arc the least easily recon- 
ciled, is the effect of it upon the wife and mother 
when she passes into widowhood. She is deposed 
from her station and deprived of her affluence at the 
moment of her greatest domestic calamity, and her 
own child is the person to whom they are transferred. 
It may be that the cares, duties and responsibilities of 
a large property and a high proprietary station, are not 
suitable to a widow in the decline of life : but this is 
not left for her to determine, and very frequently the 
still less acceptable cares of a straitened income and 
a total change in her mode of life are fixed upon her. 
The force of custom has brought the feelings of 
mankind into more accordance than one would have 
thought possible with so unnatural an arrangement; but 
the husband needs not to be charged with parsimony, 
who should save money with a view to mitigate the 
future contrast between his wife's position and his 
widow's. 

Of all undue savings, those of churchmen should be 
regarded with the least toleration. For though wealth 
is, morally speaking, held in trust, the trust is of a 
more sacred nature in the case of wealth derived from 
the revenues of the Church. Out of that hire of which 
the laborer is worthy, he may leave to his family a 
competent provision ; but he does not leave to them 



10 OF MONEY. 

a good name, if he leaves to them wealth which he 
did not inherit. On this point the Church at large has 
latterly, perhaps, stood clear. It were to be wished 
that, for the future, it should see the best example set 
by the highest of its dignitaries. 

Thirdly : — As to the spending of money. 

The art of living easily as to money, is to pitch your 
scale of living one degree below your means. Com- 
fort and enjoyment are more dependent upon easiness 
in the detail of expenditure, than upon one degree's 
difference in the scale. 

Guard against false associations of pleasure with 
expenditure, — the notion that because pleasure can 
be purchased with money, therefore money cannot 
be spent without enjoyment. What a thing costs a 
man is no true measure of what it is worth to him ; 
and yet how often is his, appreciation governed by 
no other standard, as if there were a pleasure in 
expenditure per se. 

Let yourself feel a want before you provide against 
it. You are more assured that it is a real want ; 
and it is worth while to feel it a little, in order to 
feel the relief from it. 

When you are undecided as to which of two 
courses you would like best, choose the cheapest. 
This rule will not only save money, but save also 
a good deal of trifling indecision. 



OF MONEY. 11 

Too much leisure leads to expense ; because when 
a man is in want of objects, it occurs to him that 
they are to be had for money ; and he invents ex- 
penditures in order to pass the time. 

A thoroughly conscientious mode of regukting 
expenditure implies much care and trouble in resist- 
ing imposition, detecting fraud, preventing waste, and 
doing what in you lies to guard the honesty of your 
stewards, servants, and tradesmen, by not leading 
them into temptation but delivering them from evil. 
A man who should be justly sensible of the duties 
involved in expenditure and determined to discharge 
them, would find the burthen of them heavy; and 
instead of having a pleasure in expense, he would 
probably desire as much as might be to avoid the 
trouble of it. We sometimes hear rich men charged 
with parsimony because they look minutely to differ- 
ences of cost; but if they are spending their money 
in a right spirit, the question they have to consider 
is, not whether the sum is of importance to them- 
selves, but whether it is right or wrong that it should 
be given and taken. If then the acquisition of great 
wealth involve many cares and troubles, not few are 
those which should attend the due dispensing and 
managing thereof, as well as the execution of the 
various trusts belonging to the station into which 
great wealth will lift a man : — 



13 



OF MONEY. 



'For now know I in veray sothfastnesse 
That in gret lordship, if I me wel avise, 
Ther is, gret servitude in sondry wise.' * 

Young men, instead of undertaking the disagree- 
able office of checking accounts, are often inclined 
to lay out a good deal of money in the purchase of 
bows and smiles, which they mistake for respect. It 
is only the right and just payment that commands 
real respect : and the obsequious extortioner, well 
understanding the weakness on which he practises, 
will often repay himself for his own servility, not 
only in money, but in secret contempt for his dupe. 

Prodigality is indeed the vice of a weak nature, 
as avarice is of a strong one ; it comes of a weak 
craving for those blandishments of the world which 
are easily to be had for money, and which, when 
obtained, are as much worse than worthless as a 
harlot's love is worse than none. 

' Thrice happy he whose nobler thoughts despise 

To make an object of so easy gains ; 
Thrice happy he who scorns so poor a prize 
Should be the crown of his heroic pains : 
Thrice happy he who ne'er was born to try 
Her frowns or smiles ; or being born, did lie 
In his sad nurse's arms an hour or two, and die.' f 

* Chaucer. Gierke's Tale, Pars 5\ 
f Quarles. 



OF MONEY. 13 

Fourthly: — As to giving and taking. All giving 
is not generous ; and the gift of a spendthrift is sel- 
dom given in generosity; for prodigality is, equally 
with avarice, a selfish vice : nor can there be a more 
spurious view of generosity than that which has been 
often taken by sentimental comedians and novelists, 
when they have represented it in combination with 
recklessness and waste. He who gives only what he 
would as readily throw away, gives without gener- 
osity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacri- 
fice. Waste, on the contrary, comes always by 
self-indulgence ; and the weakness and softness in 
which it begins will not prevent the hard-heartedness 
to which all selfishness tends at last. The mother 
of Gertruda 

' In many a vigil of her last sick bed, 
Bid her beware of spendthrifts as of men 
That seeming in their youth not worse than light. 
Would end not so, but with the season change ; 
For Time, she said, which makes the serious soft, 
Turns lightness into hardness.' 

When you give, therefore, take to yourself no credit 
for generosity, unless you deny yourself something 
in order that you may give. 

I have known a man who was never rich, and 
was indeed in a fair way to be ruined, make a 
present of several hundred pounds, under what he 



14 OF MONEY. 

probably conceived to bo an impulse of generous 
friendship : but if that man had been called upon to 
get up an hour earlier in the morning to serve his 
friend, I do not believe that he would have done it. 
The fact was that he had no real value for money, 
no real 'care for consequences which were not to be 
immediate : in parting with some hundreds of pounds 
he flattered his self-love with a show of self-sacrifice ; 
in parting with an hour's folding of the hands to 
sleep, the self-sacrifice would have been real, and 
the' show of it not very magnificent. 

Again, do not take too much credit even for your 
self-denial, unless it be cheerftdly and genially under- 
gone. Do not dispense your bounties only because 
you know it to be your duty, and are afraid to 
leave it undone : for this is one of those duties which 
should be done more in the spirit of love than in 
that of fear. I have known persons who have lived 
frugally, and spent a large income almost entirely 
in acts of charity and bounty, and yet with all this 
they had not the open hand. When the act did not 
define itself as a charitable duty, the spirit of the 
God-beloved giver was wanting, and they failed in 
all those little genial liberalities towards friends, rela- 
tives and dependents, which tend to cultivate the 
sympathies and kindnesses of our nature quite as 
much as charity to the poor or munificence in the 
contribution to public objects. 



OF MONEY. 15 

The kindness from which a gift proceeds will ap- 
pear in the choice as well as in the cost of it. I 
have known a couple who married on ,£400 a year, 
receive three carriages as wedding gifts, they being 
unable of course to keep one. The donors had been 
thinking rather of what would do credit to themselves, 
than of what would be serviceable and acceptable : 
or they had not been thinking at all ; and if so they 
had not been really kind ; for real kindness is thought- 
ful. 

When gifts proceed from public bodies, communi- 
ties, or high functionaries, in the way of testimonials, 
and are to do honor to the party receiving them, they 
should if possible assume a shape in which they will 
be seen without being shown. 

There is often as much generosity in accepting 
gifts as theifi can be in bestowing them, — the gen- 
erosity of a nature which stands too strong in its 
humility to fear humiliation, which knows its own 
independence, and is glad to be grateful. 

Upon a very different sense of generosity arc some 
of the practices of the present time founded. It is 
not an uncommon thing amongst some persons, with 
peculiar notions of doing things delicately, for con- 
tributions to be conveyed to some decayed gentle- 
woman under various pretences which are meant to 
disguise, more or less transparently, the fact that she 



16 OF MONEY. 

receives money in charity. Some wretched products 
of her pencil, which would not command one penny 
in the market, are privately sold for five shillings 
a-piece, and the proceeds are paid to her as if she 
had earned them ; or a few deplorable verses are 
stitched together and disposed of in the same man- 
ner. It is surely impossible to take a more unworthy 
view of what should be the character and spirit of a 
gentlewoman, than that which this sort of proceeding 
implies. If a gentlewoman be in want, she should 
say so with openness, dignity, and truth, and accept 
in the manner that becomes a gentlewoman, in all 
lowliness but without the slightest humiliation or 
shame, whatever money she has occasion for and 
others are willing to bestow. The relations between 
her and them will in that case admit of respect on 
the one side and gratitude on the other. But where 
false and juggling pretences are resorted to, no wor- 
thy or honest feeling can have place. Delicacy is a 
strong thing ; and whether in giving or taking, let us 
always maintain the maxim, that what is most sound 
and true is most delicate. 

There are some other ways of the world in this 
matter of charity, which proceed, I think, upon false 
principles and feelings, — charity dinners, charity 
balls, charity bazaars, and so forth ; devices (not 
even once blessed) for getting rid of distress without 



OF MONEY. 17 

calling out any compassionate feeling in those who 
give or any grateful feeling in those who receive. 
God sends misery and misfortune into the world for 
a purpose ; they are to be a discipline for His crea- 
tures who endure, and also for his His creatures who 
behold them. In those they are to give occasion for 
patience, resignation, the spiritual hopes and aspira- 
tions which spring from pain when there comes no 
earthly relict', or the love and gratitude which earthly 
ministrations of relief are powerful to promote. In 
these they are to give occasion for pity, self-sacrifice, 
and devout and dutiful thought, subduing — for the 
moment at least — the light, vain, and pleasure-loving 
motions of our nature. If distress be sent into the 
world for these ends, it is not well that it should be 
shuffled out of the world without any of these ends 
being accomplished ; and still less that it should be 
made the occasion of furthering ends in some meas- 
ure opposite to these; that it should be danced away 
at a ball, or feasted away at a dinner, or dissipated 
at a bazaar. Better were it in my mind, that misery 
should run its course with nothing but the mercy of 
God to stay it, than that we should thus corrupt our 
charities. 

Let me not be misunderstood. Feasting and dan- 
cing, in themselves and by themselves, I by no means 
disparage : there is a time and a place for them ; 



18 OF MONEY. 

but things which arc excellent at one time and occa- 
sion, are a mere desecration at another. It is much 
more easy to desecrate our duties than to consecrate 
our amusements ; and better therefore not to mix them 
up with each other. 

Another modern mode is to raise a subscription by- 
shillings or pennies, — fixing the contribution at so low 
a sum that nobody can care whether they give it or 
not, and collecting it in the casual intercourse of so- 
ciety. This is a less vitiated mode than the others, 
being of a more negative character : but if the others 
are corrupted charity, this is no better than careless 
charity. 

Lastly, there is a rule in giving which is often over- 
looked by those whose generosity is not sufficiently 
thoughtful and severe. Generosity comes to be per- 
verted from its uses, when it ministers to selfishness in 
others : and it should be our care to give all needful 
support to our neighbor in his self-denial, rather than 
to bait a trap for his self-indulgence ; in short, to give 
him pleasure only when it will do him good, not when 
sacrifices on our part are the correlatives of abuses on 
his; for he who pampers the selfishness of another, 
does that other a moral injury which cannot be com- 
pensated by any amount of gratification imparled to 
him. 



OF MONEY. 19 

' Give thou to no man, if thou wish him well, 
What he may not in honor's interest take ; 
Else shall thou but befriend his faults, allied 
Against his better with his baser self.' 

Amongst the questionable acts which are done from 
generous motives, is the not uncommon one of a son 
and heir in tail paying the debts of a prodigal father 
deceased, out of property which the father had no 
right to appropriate. There may be instances in wliich 
such an act would be worthy of all praise ; but perhaps 
the cases are not few in which the effect is purely 
pernicious, enabling a spendthrift to squander another's 
inheritance in addition to his own ; for the frequency 
of the practice leads money-lenders and others to cal- 
culate on the chances. 

The motive of the son is the pious and commend- 
able one of shielding a parent's memory from disgrace. 
But how far is this end accomplished ? The selfishness 
which is the ground of disgrace, is the same whether 
it be the heir or the creditor that sufl^ers by it. The 
heir may suffer in silence, and the sting of personal 
damage may make the creditor cry out; but in every 
just judgment the shame and dishonor attaching to the 
memory of the dead man should be measured by what 
he did when he was alive, and not by the silence or 
outcry ensuing ; and it is hardly a high view of moral 
assoilment, which can regard with much complacency 



20 OF MONEY. 

the mere stifling of reproaches and hushing up of a 
parent's memory. In many cases, therefore, the weak 
and careless, or interested and usurious creditor, should 
be left to bear his loss when his debtor dies insolvent. 
Still our philosophy is not to put Nature out of office ; 
and if the prodigality of the parent have been merely 
one of the infirmities of * a frail good man,' and if the 
conduct of the creditor have not been grossly culpable, 
natural feeling should take its course, and the bless- 
ing will be upon Shem and Japhet rather than upon 
Ham. 

Fifthly : — As to lending and Iwrrowing. 

Never lend money to a friend, unless you are satis- 
fied that he does wisely and well in borrowing it. 
Borrowing is one of the most ordinary ways in which 
weak men sacrifice the future to the present, and 
thence is it that the gratitude for a loan is so prover- 
bially evanescent : for the future, becoming present in 
its turn, will not be well pleased with those who have 
assisted in doing it an injury. By conspiring with 
your friend to defraud his future self, you naturally 
incur his future displeasure. Take to heart, therefore, 
the admonition of the ancient courtier : — 

' Neither a borrower nor a lender be j 
For loan oft loselh bolh itself and friend, 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.' * 

* Shakespeare. 



OF MONEY. 21 

To withstand solicitations for loans is often a great 
trial of firmness ; the more especially as the pleas and 
pretexts alleged are generally made plausible at the 
expense of truth ; for nothing breaks down a man's 
truthfulness more surely than pecuniaiy embarrass- 
ment : — 

' An unthrift was a liar from all time ; 
Never was debtor that was not deceiver.' 

The refusal which is at once the most safe from vacil- 
lation, and perhaps as little apt to give offence as any, 
is the point blank refusal, without reasons assigned. 
Acquiescence is more easily given in the decisions of 
a strong will, than in reasons, which weak men, under 
the bias of self-love, will always imagine themselves 
competent to controvert. 

Some men will lend money to a friend in order, as 
it were, to purchase a right of remonstrance : but the 
right so purchased is worth nothing. You may buy 
the man's ears, but not his heart or his understand- 
ing. 

I have never known a debtor or a prodigal who was 
not, in his own estimation, an injured man ; and I have 
generally found that those who had not suffered by 
them were disposed to side with them; for it is the 
weak who make an outcry, and it is by the outcry that 
the world is wont to judge. They who lend money to 



22 OF MONEY. 

spendthrifts should be prepared, therefore, to suffer in 
their reputation as well as in their purse. Let us learn 
from the Son of Sirach : — ' Many, when a thing was 
lent them, reckoned it to be found, and put them to 
trouble that helped them. Till he hath received he 
will kiss a man's hand ; and for his neighbor's money- 
he will speak submissly ; but when he should repay, 
he will prolong the time, and return words of grief, 
and complain of the time. If he prevail he shall 
hardly receive the half, and he will count as if he had 
found it ; if not, he hath deprived him of his money, 
and he hath gotten him an enemy without cause : he 
paycth him with cursing and railings, and for honor he 
will pay him with disgrace.' 

It is a common reproach with which mankind 
assails mankind, that those who fall into poverty are 
forsaken by their friends : — 

' Ay, quolh Jacques, 
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ; 
'Tis just the fashion ; wherefore do you look 
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? ' * 

But before the friends of the poor be condemned, it 
would be well to inquire whether their poverty have 
been honestly come by ; and I believe it would very 
rarely be found that a person in a fair condition of 

* ' As You Like It,' Act ii. Scene 1. 



OF MONEY. 23 

life is allowed to sink unassisted into extreme indi- 
gence without some serious fault and offence : and 
the person having so sunk, it will be found to be 
still more rarely the case that the pressure of poverty 
is not too strong for his character. It is when the 
character has given way, that poverty is deserted: 
for pity and affection divorced from respect, lose the 
main element of their strength and permanency. 

The ordinary course of things, then, is as follows : 
— A becoming embarrassed, through some (perhaps 
venial) imprudence, is kindly assisted by his friends, 
B, C, and D; who, however, do not altogether ap- 
prove his conduct, but think it would be ungenerous 
in them, under the protection of the favors they are 
conferring, to assail him with reproaches. So far 
all goes smoothly between A on the one hand, and 
B, C, D on the other. But A, having, by the loans 
he has received, staved off any immediate conse- 
quences of his imprudence, is under a rather stronger 
temptation than before to forego the severe self-denial 
which would set him right again. He has now broken 
the ice in the matter of asking favors : he has in- 
curred whatever humiliation belongs to it ; and having 
begged once, it costs him comparatively little to beg 
again. This process of begging and borrowing goes 
on therefore, becoming continually more frequent and 
less efficacious; and as the borrower grows less and 



24 OF MONEY. 

less scrupulous, he nourishes his pride (the ordinary- 
refuge of those who lose their independence) and 
resents every re})ulse as an insult. B, C, and D 
then discover that they are not to be thanked for 
what they have lent, but rather n>proached for not 
lending more and more ;. whereupon they withdraw 
their friendship ; and those who ignorantly look on, 
or perhaps hear the story of A, whilst B, C, and D 
arc silent out of consideration for him, make remarks 
on inconstancy in friendship and the manner in which 
men arc forsaken in their adversity and distress. 

The desertion by friends, however well merited, 
leads the embarrassed man to consider himself as a 
castaway, and throw hims(^lf into still more reckless 
and shameless courses; and on the part of men in 
this condition there is sometimes seen a perfect in- 
fatuation of extravagance, which seems to proceed 
from the delusions of a disordered mind and a sort 
of fascination in ruin. Such men come to have a 
repugnance to spare expense, because it brings the 
feeling of their difficulties home to them ; and a 
relief in profuseness, because it seems for the mo- 
ment to rencnince the very notion of embarrassment. 
The end may be short of the gallows, (for in our 
days the gallows has fallen out of favor,) but it will 
scarcely be short of a punishment worse than death : 
for men will not tolerate in its necessary conse- 



OF MONEY. 25 

quonces that to wliich they arc very hidulgent in its 
inchoation ; and the ' unfortunate debtor ' who was 
cockered with compassion whilst he was in that stage 
of his existence, is regarded with just indignation 
and abhorrence when he has passed into that of the 
desperate outcast : though it may be as much in the 
course of nature that the one stage should follow the 
other, as that a tadpole, if he lives, should grow to 
be a toad. 

Creditors have always been an obnoxious people, 
and in divers times and countries the laws which 
have awarded imprisonment for insolvent debt have 
shared in their unpopularity. But when we trace 
debt in its consequences and look to all the social 
evils which have their root in it, and when we con- 
sider that in moral as well as in physical therapeutics, 
the principle of withstanding commencements is a|l- 
important, we may well, I think, bring ourselves to 
believe that insolvent debt should be regarded as 
presumably criminal, and unless proved to be other- 
wise, should fall within the visitations of penal law. 

There remains only to be considered. 

Sixthly: — The subject of bequeathing : and some 
topics which might have fallen under this head have 
been anticipated in treating of motives for saving. 

To make a will in one way or another is of course 
the duty of every person whose heir-at-law is not the 



26 OF MONET. 

proper inheritor oi' all lie possesses : and unless wliere 
there is sonic just cause for setting them aside, ex- 
pectations generated by the customs of the world are 
sufTicient to establish a moral right to inherit and to 
impose a correspomling obligation to bequeath. For 
custom may be presumed, in the absence of any 
reasons to the contrary, to have grown out of some 
natural fitness; and at all events it will have brought 
about an amount of adaptation which is often suffi- 
cient, as regards individual cases, to make a fitness 
where there was none. Unless in exceptional in- 
stances, therefore, in which special circumstances are 
of an overruling force, the disappointment of expec- 
tations growing out of custom is not to be inflicted 
without some very strong and solid reasons for 
believing that the custom needs to be reformed. If 
therc be such reasons, by all means let the custom 
be disregarded, all expeetati(>ns to the contrary not- 
withstanding — 

' What custom wills, in all things should we do 'l, 
The dust on antique time would lie unswept, 
And mountainous error be loo highly heaped 
For truth to ovorpeer.' * 

But the presumption should be always held to be in 
favor of custom, and he who departs from it without 

* ' Coriolanus,' Act ii. Scene 3. 



OF MONEY. 27 

the plea of special circumslancos, should 1)0 a])lo to 
find in himself a coini)elency to correct the errors 
of mankind. 

If it he not well for the; natural or customary- 
heirs that tluiy sl)f)uld he disappointed, neither is it 
good for those to whom an inheritance is diverted, 
that wealth should come upon them by surprise. 
Sudden and unexpected accessions of wealth seldom 
promote the happiness of those to whom they accrue ; 
and thf;y are for the most part morally injurious ; 
especially when they accrue by undue deprivation 
of another. 

But some part of the propcjrty of most people, 
and a large part, or even ihe whole of the property 
of some people, may not be the subject of just or 
natural expectations on the part of customary heirs ; 
and in respect of such property there is a great 
liberty of judgment on the part of the testator, 
though ii is to be a grave and responsible, not a 
capricious liberty. The testator has to consider to 
whom the property will bring a real increase of 
enjoyment without increase of temptation ; and in 
whose hands it is likely most to promote the happi- 
ness of others. In general the rule of judgment 
should be to avoid lifting people out of one station 
into another ; and to aim at making such moderate 
additions to moderate fortunes in careful hands as 



28 OF MONEY. 

may not disturb the proportion of property to station, 

— or still better, may rectify any disproportion, and 
enable those who are living with a difficult frugality 
to live with a free frugality. 

This rule is not, I fear, verj^ generally regarded; 
for mere rectitude, and the observance of measures 
and proportions, does not much lay hold of the minds 
of men. On the contrary, there is a general dispo- 
sition to add to anything which affects the imagination 
by its magnitude ; and there is also in some people 
a sort of gloating over great wealth, which infects 
them with a propensity to feed a bloated fortune. 
Jacques took note of this when he saw the deer 
that was weeping in ' the needless stream : ' — • 

' Thou mak'st a testament 
As worldings do, giving thy sum of more 
To that which had too much.' * 

Thus it is that in the most solemn acts which men 
have to perform in the management of their money 

— in those too from which selfish ends seem most 
removed — they will often appear to be as little 
sensible of moral motives and righteous responsibili- 
ties as in any other transactions ; and even a testator 
jamjam moriturus will dictate his will with a sort of 
posthumous cupidity, and seem to desire that his 
worldliness should live after him. 

* ' As You Like It,' Act ii. Scene 1 



OP HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

I PROPOSE to treat of these jointly, because I 
regard them as inseparably connected in life. We 
shall find, I think, on looking below the surface, 
that Humility is the true mother and nurse of In- 
dependence ; and that Pride, which is so often sup- 
posed to stand to her in that relation, is, in reality, 
the step-mother, by whom is wrought — novercalihus 
odiis — the very destruction and ruin of Indepen- 
dence. 

For pride has a perpetual reference to the esti- 
mation in which we are holden by others ; fear of 
opinion is of the essence of it ; and with this fear 
upon us it is impossible that we should be indepen- 
dent. The proud man is of all men the most vul- 
nerable ; and as there is nothing that rankles and 
festers more than wounded pride, he has much cause 
for fear. Pride, therefore — w^hether active or pas- 
sive — whether it goes forth to claim the deference 
of mankind, or secludes itself from the danger of 



30 OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

their disrespect — has always much at stake, and 
leads a life of caution and solicitude. Humility, on 
the contrary, has no personal objects, and leads its 
life in ' the service which is perfect freedom.' 

An uneasy, jealous, or rebellious feeling in regard 
to ranks and degrees, argues this want of indepen- 
dence through defect of humility. It is the feeling of 
a man who makes too much account of such things. 
A begrudging of rank and station, and refusal of such 
deference as the customs of the world have conceded 
to them, will generally be found to proceed from the 
man who secretly overvalues them, and who, if him- 
self in possession of them, would stretch his pre- 
tensions too far. For plebeian j)ride and aristocratic 
pride issue from one and the same source in human 
nature. An illiberal self-love is at the bottom of 
both. 

When low-born men of genius, like Burns the poet, 
maintain the. superiority of intrinsic worth to adventi- 
tious distinction, we can readily go along with them 
so far: but when they reject the claims of social rank 
and condition in a spirit of defiance and resentment, 
as if sullering a personal injury, we may very well 
question whether they have not missed of the inde- 
pendence at which they aimed : for had their inde- 
pendence been genuine, they would have felt that all 
they possessed which was valuable was inalienable; 



OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 31 

and having nothing to lose by the social superiority 
of the bettor born, they would have made them wel- 
come to it, as being perhaps a not inequitable com- 
pensation for the comparatively small share bestowed 
on them of intellectual gifts and abilities. 

If equality be what these men of independence 
would contend for, it can only be had (if at all) by 
the balance of what is adventitious : for natural equal- 
ity there is none. If personal merit be what they 
regard, this, at least, will not found any claim for 
intellectual endowments to be preferred to accidents 
of station. There is no more of personal merit in a 
great intellect than in a great estate. It is the use 
which is made of the one and of the other, which 
should found the claim to respect ; and the man who 
has it at heart to make the best use he can of either, 
will not be much occupied with them as a means of 
commanding respect. Thus it is that respect is com- 
monly least due, as well as least willingly accorded, 
where it is arrogated most, and that independence is 
hardly possessed where it is much insisted on. * The 
proud man,' says St. Jerome, ' (who is the poor man,) 
braggcth outwardly, but beggcth inwardly.' The 
humble man, who thinks little of his independence, 
is the man who is strong in it ; and he who is not 
solicitous of respect will commonly meet with as much 
as he has occasion for. * Who calls ? ' says the old 



32 OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

shepherd in * As You Like it ; ' ' Your betters/ is the 
insolent answer : and what is the shepherd's rejoinder ? 
' Else are they very wretched.' By what retort, re- 
prisal, or repartee, could it have been made half so 
manifest that the insult had lighted upon armor of 
proof? Such is the invincible independence of hu- 
mility. 

The declaration of our Saviour that the meek shall 
inherit the earth, may be understood, I think, as veri- 
fied in the very nature and attributes of meekness. 
The dross of the earth the meek do 7iot. inherit ; the 
damnosa Jucreditas of the eartlvs pomps and vanities 
descends to others : but all the true enjoyments^ the 
wisdom, love, peace, and independence, which earth 
can bestow, are assured to the meek as inherent in 
their meekness. "Tis in ourselves that we are thus 
or thus.' It depends on our own hearts to cast off 
the bondage of pride with all its chains and sores, 
and by meekness to possess the earth. For this pos- 
session comes not by observation, and saying ' Lo ! 
here, or Lo ! there : • * But as the Kingdom of God 
is within us, so also is the inheritance of the Earth : 

' How much that Genius boasts as her's 

And fancies her's alone, 
On you, Meek Spirits, Faith confers ! 
The proud have further gone, 

* Luke xvii. 21. 



OF HUMfLITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 33 

Perhaps, through life's deep maze, but you 
Alone possess the labyrinth's clue, 

' To you the costliest spoils of thought, 

Wistlom, unclaimed, yields up ; 
To you the far-sought pearl is brought, 

And melted in your cup ; 
To you her nard and myrrh she brings, 
Like orient gifts to infant kings. 

' The single eye alone can see 

All truths around us thrown, 
In their eternal unity ; 

The humble ear alone 
Has room to hold, and time to prize, 
The sweetness of life's harmonics.' * 

If distinctions of rank, order, and degree were of 
no other use in tlic world, they might be desired for 
the exercise which tliey give to a generous humility, 
on the part of tliosc who have them and of those 
who have them not. The inequahty of relation should 
cultivate this virtue on both sides; those who have 
the superiority being disposed to prize it at no more 
than its worth ; thof^ who have it not, being glad to 
recognise superiority in others, even in this its least 
substantial form — 



* Aubrey De Vere ; Waldenses, and other Poems, p. 165. 
3 



34 OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

' Cloth of gold, be not too nice, 
Though thou be matched with cloth of frieze ; 
Cloth of frieze, be not too bold, 
Though thou be matched with cloth of gold.' * 

Here arc two humilities enjoined ; that which in a 
superior forgets superiority — that which in an infe- 
rior remembers inferiority : and neither could have 
place without difference of rank and degree. 

When the social distinctions indicate power and a 
governing authority, the relations between the parties 
are still more pregnant with occasions for the exercise 
of humility. From humility there will result, not 
only on the one side a generous care and consideration 
in the use of power, but likewise, on the other, what 
may be called a generous submission. For though 
the world may be more aware of generosity shown 
in the exercise of power, there is a generosity also in 
the spirit of obedience, when it is cordial, willing, and 
free ; and this is the case only when the nature is 
humble. 

It is indeed chiefly in our intercourse with equals 
and superiors that our humility is put to the proof. 
When the * Servus Servorinn ' at Rome washes, ac- 
cording to annual usage, the feet of some poor pil- 
grims, the ceremony, if it be held to typify humility, 

• Old Saw. 



OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 35 

should at the same time be understood to be typical of 
the easiest of all humilities. If the same personage 
were to hold the stirrup of an emperor, the proceeding 
would be typical of another degree of humility, — and 
one to which the Potentates of the Earth could not 
bear witness in his predecessors. Many people are 
gentle and forbearing with those placed under them, 
but proud and quarrelsome in their dealings with those 
above them. Where humility is wanting, there may 
be much submission without generosity, or, on the 
other hand, much resistance without an independent 
spirit. The disposition to submit to authority unduly, 
and where the interests of others or our own are un- 
justly injured, will never arise out of humility ; it will 
always arise out of those worldly anxieties from which 
the humble heart is exempt. The disposition to resist 
authority from personal feelings, where no duty dic- 
tates the resistance, will never proceed from a genuine 
spirit of independence ; for the heart is not indepen- 
dent which is engaged in a struggle for personal ob- 
jects. And whether submitting or resisting, humility 
and independenpe will still be found to go together ; 
but they will for the most part be found to be favored 
by submission; for the pride of the human heart, 
which is commonly called up by resistance even when 
not undue, is in like manner abated by submission, 
even when carried too far ; and wherever pride is 



36 OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

abated, the heart is raised and |nirifiod and made 
free. Elevation, therefore, is chiefly to be found in 
submission — * Govern them and lift them up.' 

Iluniilitv, like most other virtues, has its credit a 
cood deal shaken by the number of counterfeits that 
are abroad. Amongst the false humilities by which 
the world is most flattered and beguiled, is that of the 
professor in this kind who shrinks from all censure 
and reprobation of wliat is evil, under cover of the 
text, ' Judge not lest ye be judged ; ' as if it were the 
intent of that text, not to warn us against rash, pre- 
sumptuous and uncharitable judgments, but absolutely 
to forbid our taking account of the distinction between 
right and wrong. ' It is not for us to judge our broth- 
er,' says the humilitarian of this way of thinking ; 
' we know not how he may have been tempted ; per- 
haps he was born with stronger passions than other 
people ; it may have been that he was ill brought Uj) ; 
peradventure he was thrown amongst evil associates; 
we oursidves, had we been placed in the same cir- 
cumstances, might have been in like manner led 
astray.' Such are the false charities of a false and 
popular humility. If we are to excuse all the moral 
evil that we can account for, and abstain from judging 
all of which we can suppose that there is some adequate 
explanation, where are we to stop in our absolutions ? 
Whatever villany exists in the world is compounded 



OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 37 

of what is inborn and what comes ])y circumstance : 
there is nothing so base or detestable but it is the 
consequence of some adequate cause ; and if we are 
to make allowances for all but causeless wickedness, 
there is an end of condemnation. 

The man of true liuinility, on the contrary, will not 
spare the vices and errors of his fellow-creatures, any 
more than he would his own ; he will exercise man- 
fully, and without fear or favor, those judicial functions 
which God has committed, in some greater or less 
degree, to every member of the human community; 
but he will come to the task, on serious occasions, 
not lightly or una wed, but praying to have ' a right 
judgment in all things;' and whilst exercising that 
judgment in no spirit of compromise or evasion, he 
will feel that to judge his brother is a duty and not a 
privilege ; and he will judge him in sorrow, humbled 
by the contemplation of that fallen nature of which he 
is himself part and parcel. 

There is a current and a natural opinion, that a man 
has no right to censure in others a fault with which he 
is himself chargeable. But even this limitation is 
founded, I think, upon the same erroneous notion, of 
moral censure being an honorable privilege instead of 
a responsible function, a franchise instead of a due. 
No faults are better known and understood by us than 
those whereof we have ourselves been guilty; none, 



38 OF nUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

siiroly, sliouKl bo so porsoiially obnoxious to us as 
those by which wo liavo oui"solves been defiled and dc- 
gmded : and may wo not, there foix?, be expected to 
be quick in perceiving them, and to regard them with 
a pccuHar bitterness, ratlier than to overlook them in 
othei*s: I would answer, assuredly yes: but always 
witli this proviso — that to bitterness of censure should 
be added confession and humilijition and the bitterness 
of personal shame and contrition. AVithout tliis the 
censure is not warrantable, because it is not t'ounded 
upon a genuine moral sense ; it is not, indeed, sincere : 
for though the olfence may be worthy of all disgust 
and abhorrence, that ablion*ence and disgust cannot 
be really felt by those who have connnitted the like 
ollence themselves without sliame or repentance. 

Resides the false humility under cover of which we 
desert the duty of censuring our fellow-creatures, there 
are others by which we evade or pervert that oi^ cen- 
suring oui*selves. The most conunon ot^ the spurious 
humilities of this kind, is that by which a general lan- 
guage of self-disparagement is substituted for a dis- 
tinct discernment and specific acknowledgment of our 
nwl faults. The humble individual oi^ this class will 
declaix^ himself to be very incontestably a miserable 
sinner ;^ but at the same time there is no particular 
fault or error that can be imputed to him tVom which 
he will not tlnd himself to be happily exempt. Each 



OF HUMILITY AT<T) INDEPENDENCE. 39 

item is severally denier] ; and the acknowledgment of 
general sinfulness turns out to have been an unmeaning 
abstraetion — a sum total of ciphers. It is not thus 
tljat iho Dovil makes up liis accounts. 

Anot})cr way is to confess fault^s from which we arr^ 
tolerably frcft, being perhaps chargeable with no larger 
share of thorn than is common to humanity, whilst we 
pass over the sins which are more peculiarly and abun- 
dantly our own. Real humility will not teach us any 
undue severity, but truthfulness in self-judgment. 'My 
Son, glorify thy soul in meekness, and give it honor 
according to the dignity thereof.' * For undue self- 
abasement and self-distrust will impair the strength 
and independence of the mind, which, if accustomed 
to have a just satisfaction with itself where it may, will 
the better bear to probe itself, and will lay itself open 
with the more fortitude to intimations of its weakness 
on points in which it stands truly in need of correction. 
No humility is thoroughly sound which is not thor- 
oughly truthful. The man who brings misdirected or 
inflated accusations against himself, does so in a false 
humility, and will probably be found to indemnify him- 
self on one side or another. Either he takes a pride 
in his supposed humility ; or escaping in his self-con- 
demnations from the darker into the lighter shades of 

* Ecclesiasticus, x. 28. 



40 OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

his life and nature, he plays at hide-and-seek with his 
conscience. 

And true humility, heing a wise virtue, will deal 
more in self-examination and secret contrition than in 
confession. For confession is often a mere luxury of 
the conscience, — used as the epicures of ancient 
Rome would use an emetic and a warm bath before 
they sat down to a feast. It is often also a very snare 
to the maker of it, and a delusion ])ractised on the 
party to whom it is made. For, first, the Aiults may 
be such as words will not adequately explain : sec- 
ondly, the plea of 'guilty' shakes judgment in her 
seat : thirdly, the indulgence shown to confession 
might be better bestowed on the shame which con- 
ceals; for this tends to correction, whereas confession 
will many times stand instead of penitence to the 
wrong-doer; and sometimes even a sorrowful peni- 
tence stands in the place of amendment, and is washed 
away in its own tears. 

There is a frivolous practice of confession, much 
used in certain classes of society, by which young 
ladies or others, in the earlier moments of a friend- 
ship, take out a license to talk of themselves. In the 
confessionals of the ball-room, much superfluity of 
naughtiness is mutually disclosed, by persons who 
might have been better employed in dancing than in 
confessing. This needs not to be very severely no- 



OF HUMILITY AND INDEPENDENCE. 41 

ticed ; yet it points to an infirmity against whicyi it may 
be well to be on our guard ; and when the occasion is 
sufficiently serious, we should take care that our con- 
fessions are free from any egotistical t^aint. 

Of all false humilities, the most false is to be found 
in that meeting of extremes wherein humility is cor- 
rupted into pride. Jolin Wesley, when he was de- 
sirous to fortify his followers against ridicule, taught 
them to court it. 'God forbid,' said he, 'that we should 
not be the laughing-stock of mankind ! ' But it is 
through pride, and not in humility, that any man will 
desire to be a laughing-stock. And though it may 
seem at first sight that he has attained to an indepen- 
dence of mankind when he can brave their laughter, 
yet this is a fallacious appearance : it will be found 
that in so far as his humility was corrupted, his inde- 
pendence was undermined ; and whilst courting the 
ridicule of the world, he is in reality courting the 
admiration and applause of his party or sect, or fear- 
ing their rebuke. This is the dependence into which 
he has fallen, and there is probably no slavery of the 
heart which is comparable to that of sectarian pride. 
Moreover, Mr. Wesley's followers doubtless deemed 
that the laughers were in danger of hell-fire. Where 
then was their charity when they desired to be laughed 
at by all mankind ? Or if (without desiring it) they 
deem mankind, themselves only excepted, to be in so 



4U 



or lUMuirv anp iNUKrHNnKNCK 



n^prv>K'\lo a stnto. that \\\c n^liiii«nis must iu\h1s lu> ;i 
Ianijl\ii>iv-stivk, — was this th(Mr liiunility : 1 wish tv> 
spoak of Mr. Wosh\v with ix^spoot. not to say ivvt^r- 
oi\0(^ : h\it in tl\is iiistanot^ I think that l\is apptwl was 
inailo to a loinpor oC \\{\\u\ in his t'ollowtMN wlnoh was 
not piux^ly C^'hristian. It is not tho mook who will 
thivw o\\\ this sort o( ohalhMigo at\il iltMiatu'o : juul it i^^ 
pritlo. at\d not hmnility. whioh wo sl\all fiml \o Ho 
nt tho hoitvMn ot* any suoh i^stontations solt' alv\so- 
inont — 

' For Priao. 

^V^iv'h is tho IVvU's toastinij-tork. k\o[\\ toast 
lliM\ bi\>\vt\ost th;\t his whiteness vauutoih most.' 



OF (:u()\(:i-: ix maiumaoe. 

' What (]() you think of rnurriaj^o r ' fv'AyH the I>uch- 
OKH of Mulfy in WohHtcr'H play, fxnd Ant/>riio annvvcrH, 

' I take it as ihohc that deny pargat/^ry ; 
It locally contains or heaven or hell j 
Th';re in no third place in it.' 

When I waH young and inexpcrionccrl in wives, I 
did not take the 8?irno view of marriage which Antonio 
took. I uH<;d to say that there were two kindw of rnar- 
ri?jgeK, witli eitfier of whicli a rnan might he cont/mt; 
the one ' the ineorponxte existence marriage,' the other 
* the pleawint addit^ument marriage.' For I thought 
that if a man could not command a marriage hy which 
all UiUirfiHiH would ^iC deepened, all ohy'XiU exalted, 
rewardw and forfeitures douhled and far more tlian 
douhled, and all the companitives of life turned into 
HuperlativcH, then there remained, neverthelesH, a very 
agreeahle kind of resource, — a marriage, that ih, in 
which one might live one's own Hul.rHtfintive life with 
the additional ernlx^lliwhment of s<^^me graceful, »implo. 



•11 oi" ciiou'i', IN ]maki{ia(;k. 

ji;ay, rnsy-h«Mrl(ul rr(^;ilur(\ wlu) woulil li(> li^lit upon 
the surfaco of one's heiii^, be at hand wlienever soli- 
tude and st>rious j)ursuits liad heeoine irksome, and 
nev(M' h(> iu the \vay \\\\v\\ sIk^ is not wanted. Visions 
thi^s(» are ; nier(>ly dn\'nns oi' our Ki)ieureau youth. 
Then* is no s\\v\\ wife, and marriage is what Antonio 
took it to he. 

And niarriai:;!^ l»eiu<:; thus tlie hiijjiiest stake on this 
side \\\c jj;rav(\ it stUMUs straui^e tliat men slundil be 
so hasty in the elioiee kA' a wife as tliey sometimes 
an" ; (or if we look about us at those marriages in 
which HUM) and women have ehoscn for themselves, 
we sliail liud that own when" then' has hvcn no abso- 
lute passion to i^xpcdite the busiuess, the ehoiee has 
not always Ihmmi preeedtnl by nuieh deliberation. Per- 
haps it is t)wiu«j!; \o that very fact of the decision being 
so critical, that it is often a little hurried; for when 
great inti^rests are (li'|)(Midiug, we deliberatt" with an 
anxiety to avoid iMior wbiidi presently becomes too 
paiid'ul to be eudurtnl. aud i)erhaps, also, too disturbing 
to be succt\ssful ; and it is at some crises of their 
fortunes that men in all tinu's have been ilisposed to 
oonunit them to Provitlence, under various forms of 
reliance, some religious, others superstitious. M^> aro 
most sensible of the fallibility o( human judgment in 
those matters in whii-h il is nu»st essential to judge 
well, ;uul to the irreligimis man, fate, destiny, chance, 



OF CirOICK IN MAHHlAdK. 45 

Rortilogo, the stars — fuiytliirj^ seorns moro truHtwor- 
thy ; wliilnt ho who is not irreligious knows that what 
is <lorio in faith will ho justified in tho fruits, ho thoy 
KWfol. oy I>itt<:r. Thf; rri.'iid who * was rn.'irriod oua 
morning as sho wont into tho gardfin i'or parsloy to 
BtufT a rahhit^' migFit liavo nothing to foar in rnarriago 
if sho was ono to whom all things work logolhor for 
good . 

Men who know not in what to [>ut trust will oftfjn 
fall into tho fatal <;rror of su|)[)fjsing that sorno of tho 
graver oonsequonces of marriage arc to ho escaped 
by concubinage, — a supposition from which, if there 
bo no holtf;r rnonilor at hand, ovon th<: wisrlorri of this 
world might withliold thorn. Unless thoy l)o utterly 
heartless and worthless, thoy will find that the looser 
tic is not the lighter. Mistresses, if they have any 
h(*ld on the aflootions, are gonor.'illy rnorfj exacting 
than wives; and with ro.-ison, i'or thf;ro will n.'iturally 
be tho most assertion of claims wh(;ro there is the 
least ground for confidcince. TIkj claims strengthen 
with time, whilst tho (jualitif;s for whi('h miHtresscs are 
cornriKjnly chosen, and on which thoy (lop(;jid for thfjir 
charm, arc proverbially perishable. I>(;auly and the 
vivacities of youth fall away as soon frorrt the con- 
cubine as if sho were a wife ; domestic cares and 
jealousies will ar-crue as ro-'uliiy in tho orw, case as in 
tho other; and unless gone rosily bo out. of the ques- 



46 OF CHOICE IN BIARRIAGE. 

tion, and a man have so ' corrupted his compassions/ 
as to have deliberately determined to keep a woman's 
affections until they should involve the cares naturally 
belonging to the affections and then to cast them off, 
there is no one of the burtlicns, vexations, dues and 
responsibilities incident to marriage, which will not be 
felt with tenfold force in concubinage. Such are the 
miscalculations of selfishness. A man thinks that he 
has hung a trinket round his neck, and behold ! it is 
a millstone. 

Whilst one man will be hurried into a marriage 
from the very painfulness of perplexity, another will 
live and die a bachelor out of mere indecision. The 
latter case is the more rare, and requires a peculiar 
serenity of temper and strength of irresolution. But 
it can occur. And the cases occur very frequently in 
which a man misses, through indecision, the opportu- 
nity of making the marriage he would have liked best, 
and then, resolving to be indecisive no more, takes 
a wrong decision. So that, having regard to' the 
various sources from which error proceeds in such 
matters, it may perhaps be reasonably doubted whcth-. 
er a passion, with all its impetuosities and illusions, 
affords, comparatively speaking, an ill guidance ; and 
whether those who have surrendered to it might not 
have been as much misled, had they proposed to 
themselves the task of making a calm and judicious 
choice. 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 47 

And indeed the seasonable time for the exercise of 
prudence, is not so much in choosing a wife or a 
husband, as in choosing with whom you will so asso- 
ciate as to risk the engendering of a passion. Even 
in this choice the prudence should not be cold-blooded ; 
for a cold-blooded choice of associates is likely to lead 
to a cold-blooded marriage. With the leanings and 
leaps of the heart in the new acquaintanceships of the 
young, there should be just so much prudence pre- 
siding, as will turn them away from what there is 
reasonable ground for believing to be false, selfish, 
weak or vicious. There should be thus much and 
no more. If the taste and fancy are resisted upon 
grounds less substantial than these, they are resisted 
by what is less worthy to prevail than they ; for the 
taste and fancy are by no means of small account — 
they are indeed of all but paramount importance — 
in human life and intercourse. The taste lies deep 
in our nature, and strikes the key-note with which 
outward circumstance is to harmonize. 

But if the taste be, in truth, a matter of such 
import and ascendancy in our life, it follows that we 
are deeply responsible for the formation of it. It is, 
like everything else in us, partly of Nature's fashion- 
ing, partly of our own ; and though it is to rest upon 
the foundation of our natural dispositions, it is to be 
built, not like a baby-house at our pleasure, but ac- 



48 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

cording to the laws and model of the great Architect, 
like a temple. If there can be little that is genial or 
cordial in our life, married or unmarried, unless the 
taste be indulged, for that very reason it behoves us 
so to raise and purify the taste, as to be enabled to 
give way to it in safety and innocence — not certainly 
with a total abandonment or an absolute affiance — 
nothing short of perfection in taste could justify that — 
but with a trust proportioned to the degree of purity 
and elevation which has been attained. According 
to this measure our habitual propensities will be to- 
wards what is good ; whilst the habit of guarding and 
correcting the taste will prevail to some extent even 
over its more impassioned movements ; and if we are 
carried away by our fancy, we shall yet know whither 
we are going, and give some guidance as well as take 
some. 

Wealth and worldly considerations have a good deal 
to do with the choice made in most marriages ; and 
though the taste which is under these influences will 
not be supposed to be very high, yet if it cannot be 
elevated, better that a man should take the lower 
course to which it points, than aim at what is above 
him. If his mind be habitually involved in worldly 
interests and pursuits, he has no right to suppose that 
by stepping aside from them on a single occasion, 
even though it be the most important of all occasions, 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 49 

ho can place himself in a different order of beings, 
or bring himself into harmony with what is high and 
free. What he has to do is to emancipate his mind 
if he can ; but if not, to marry according to the con- 
ditions of his slavery. For if he marries from a mere 
impulse of his higher mind, whilst he is still in habitual 
subjection to the lower, the impulse will pass away, 
whilst the habit stands fast, and the man will find that 
he has introduced a discord into his life, or rather 
that he has composed it in the wrong key. The man 
who marries for money has one advantage over those 
who marry for other considerations ; he can know 
what he gets ; if he can feed upon husks and draff, 
it is competent to him to see that his trough is filled. 

But if marrying for money is to be justified only 
in the case of those unhappy persons who arc fit for 
nothing better, it docs not follow that marrying without 
money is to be justified in others, — marrying, that is, 
without the possession or the fair prospect of a com- 
petency suited to their condition in life. What is to 
constitute such a competency, depends in a great 
measure on the prudence, independence, and strength 
in self-denial of the parties. Those who resolve to 
marry on very small means, against the wishes of 
their relatives and friends, should always consider 
that they are setting up a claim to an extraordinary 
share of these excellent virtues; and they should not 
4 



50 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

expect their claim to be readily acknowledged unless 
it be founded, not merely on good intentions, but on 
actual savings, on ascertained facts of frugality and 
habits of self-sacrifice. Without such habits, they may 
intend and profess what they please as to indepen- 
dence and self-reliance : the result will be, that they 
have indulged their unworldly inclinations at the ex- 
pense of others. 

Whether money have much to do with a marriage 
or little, proper marriage settlements are of great 
importance. And whether, or not they be insisted 
on by the woman's friends, no man should consider 
that his individual probity or good intentions are to 
stand instead of what is just and right upon general 
principles, or that it can be otherwise than a disgrace 
to him to marry without divesting himself of all power 
which is not right and just that he should possess. 
Many are the cases in which the settled money comes 
to be the only stay of the family, and this in itself is 
a strong reason for maintaining the principle of just 
marriage settlements ; but there are objects other than 
^pecuniary and prudential, which are effected by it. 
The negotiations and transactions connected with 
marriage settlements are eminently useful, as search- 
ing character and testing affection, before an irrevo- 
cable step be taken. 

Rank and station have an influence which, though 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 51 

not very high or worthy, is to be regarded, I think, as 
somewhat less bare and poor than motives which are 
merely mercenary. There is something in differences 
of rank and degree which affects the imagination, as 
everything does which is unfamiliar ; and an imagina- 
tive person is perhaps more apt to fall in love with 
what is either above him or below him in station, than 
with what is on a dead level with him. This, however 
natural, should be looked upon as a misdirection of the 
fancy ; for any extreme inequality of station will com- 
monly lead to sore trials in marriage. 

Beauty, in itself and of itself, has, I believe, less 
power in determining matrimonial choice, than at first 
sight it might seem natural that it should have. The 
charm of mere physical and corporeal beauty is per- 
haps too open and immediate to involve consequences ; 
its first eflfect is too strong in proportion to its further 
effects : for the imagination of man wishes to feel that 
it has something to come to ; and there is a charm 
more insidiously winning in that which turns to beauty 
as you advance, than in that which declares itself as 
•beauty from the first. 

Lord Bacon has said that ' There is no excellent 
beauty without some strangeness in the proportion ; ' 
from which I infer that the beauty which had indi- 
viduality was alone excellent in his eyes ; and I 
believe this to be so far prevalent amongst mankind, 



52 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

that whilst the name of beauty is given to perfection 
of symmetry, the power of beauty is felt in a slight 
deviation from it — just sufficient to individualize 
without impairing. It is this peculiarity, this * some 
strangeness,' which lays hold of the imagination. 

But even when such a hold has been taken, the first 
feelings are those of admiration rather than love, and 
there must be something in the beauty indicating 
something besides the beauty, in order that the admi- 
ration may pass into love. If other forces are behind, 
admiration is an excellent herald and harbinger of 
love ; if not, admiration will not of itself constitute 
love ; indeed, where the passion of love has attained 
to its full force, admiration will sometimes be almost 
lost and absorbed : ' She loved too deeply to admire,' 
said one lady writing of another some thirty years 
ago. 

It is commonly said that beauty, howsoever enchant- 
ing before marriage, becomes a matter of indifference 
after. But if the beauty be of that quality which not 
only attracts admiration, but helps to deepen it into 
love, I am not one of those who think that what 
charmed the lover is forthwith to be lost upon the 
husband. It is doubtless a question of kind. There 
may be much beauty, eminent in its way, which is but 
' the perfume and suppliance of a minute ; ' but there 
exists also a species and quality of beauty, the effect 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 53 

whereof (as I conceive) it would not be possible for 
daily familiarity to deaden, and the power whereof 
may be expected to last as long as the beauty itself 
lasts, and perhaps much longer. Pictures and statues 
wrought by the more spiritual masters of art, do not 
satiate the sense ; and if in that beauty which is of 
art's creation, when the art is of the highest order, 
there is this cleaving and abiding power, we are not 
to doubt that Nature, which creates the art, is compe- 
tent to create, without the intervention of the art, a 
beauty expressed in flesh and blood, that may be con- 
stantly lived with and daily dwelt upon, yet be found 
to be not less inexhaustible in its charm. Other 
objects will intervene, no doubt, where beauty is 
present to our daily life ; a man cannot be consciously 
and continually occupied with such impressions; in- 
susceptible moods will intervene also, and the percep- 
tions will from time to time be overclouded ; this will 
be the case in regard to works of art, and even in 
regard to those natural and universal sources from 
which the sense of beauty in man is nourished as with 
its daily food ; nor can it be otherwise in regard to 
human beauty : but when this beauty is pure and spir- 
itual, I see no reason to suppose that it will be a less 
permanent source than those others; and I will not 
consent to believe that daily familiarity with it will 
make it of no effect, any more than that the flowers 



54 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

will cease to please because they hang over our doors, 
or the stars because they shine nightly. 

The exception to be taken to beauty as a marriage 
portion, (if it be beauty of the highest order,) is not 
therefore that it can become otherwise than precious 
whilst it lasts, but rather that, as it is precious so is it 
perishable, and that, let it be valued as it may, it must 
be accounted at the best but a melancholy posses- 
sion : — 

' For human beauty is a sight 

To sadden rather than delight ; 

Being the prelude of a lay 

Whose burthen is decay.' 

And if it be our fortune to encounter in flesh and 
blood a beauty which seems to revive for us the reali- 
ties from which Raffaello and Perugino painted, we 
are to consider whether to possess such beauty in 
marriage, and see it subjected to the changes and 
chances of this mortal life, would not bring upon us 
the same sort of feeling with which we should con- 
template a Madonna or a St. Cecilia hanging exposed 
to the weather, and losing some tenth part of its form 
and coloring with each successive winter. 

I have said that, considering the many misguidances 
to which a deliberative judgment is exposed in the 
matter of marriage, there may often be less risk of 
error in a choice which is impassioned. But I ought, 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 55 

perhaps, to have explained, that by a passion I do not 
mean — what young ladies sometimes mistake for it 
— a mere imaginative sentiment, dream, or illusion. 
Such imaginative sentiments, dreams, or illusions, not 
only do not constitute a passion, but they commonly 
render the person who indulges them incapable of con- 
ceiving one ; they bring out a strong fancy perhaps, 
but a weak and wasted heart. This is well understood 
by worldly mothers, who will rather promote than dis- 
courage a rapid succession of such sentiments, resting 
upon the maxim tha^ there is safety in numbers.^ In 
destitution there is security from arrest, in nakedness 
there is security from a rending of garments, and in 
this beggary of the heart there is security from a 
passion. 

But if the heart have been trained in the way that 
it should go, the passion to which it will lie open 
will be something very different from a warm illusion 
or a sentimental dream, though very possibly including 
these, and having begun in them. For true love is 
not, I think, that isolated and indivisible unity which 
it might be supposed to be from the way in which 
it is sometimes spoken of. It is mixed and manifold 
according to the abundance of the being, and in a 
large nature becomes in its progress a highly com- 
posite passion ; commonly, no doubt, having its source 
in admiration and imaginative sentiment, but as it rolls 



56 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

on, involving divers tributaries, swollen by accessory 
passions, feelings, and affections, — pity, gratitude, 
generosity, loyalty, fidelity, anxiety, fear, and de- 
votion, — and deepened by the embankments of duty 
and justice — foreign to the subject as these last may 
seem to some. In short, the whole nature and con- 
science being worked upon by this passion, re-act 
upon it and become interfused and blended with it; 
not by an absorption of all elements into one, but 
by a development of each into each : and when, 
therefore, I affirm that passion, err though it may, 
will be often less misleading than the dispassionate 
judgment, I do but aver that the entire nature — 
reason, conscience, and afTeciions, interpenetrating 
and triune, — that this totality of the nature, raised, 
vivified, and enlarged by love — is less likely to take 
an erroneous direction than a part of the nature 
standing aloof and dictating to the other parts. 

I say not, however, that the risk is small in either 
case or under any guidance. Far from it. And the 
preference to be given to passion as a guide, will 
depend upon the natural capabilities, and the maturity 
and cultivation of the moral, spiritual, and intellectual 
mind. If there be much of this for the passion to 
call out, it will be an exalted and enlightened passion, 
and may see its way. If there be little, it will be 
a blind passion. Whence it follows that passion is 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 57 

not to be taken for a guide in extreme youth; in 
the rawness of the moral and spiritual elements, and 
the greenness of the judgment. And as it is in 
these days that a first passion will most frequently 
take place, it will generally be found, I believe, that 
a second may be better trusted. 

If, however, I maintain that passion in one season 
or another of our soul's progress, is to have a voice 
of much force and potency in the direction of the 
judgment, and will enlighten it on some points more 
than it may bedarken it on others, this is not because 
I imagine that it can realize its illusions or establish 
its empire in marriage. Passion is of course ^designed 
by Nature to be transitory,; — a paroxysm, — not a 
state. And then the question arises which has been 
so often agitated, whether the affection which succeeds 
marriage is in all cases much influenced — and if 
influenced, how influenced — by the nature of the 
feeling which preceded? — Whether a passion which 
has transmigrated into an affection carries with it 
into the affection any elements which could not exist 
in an affection otherwise originating? When it begins 
with passion, there must needs be a period of collapse 
and regurgitation, or at least of subsidence. Whether, 
therefore, is the affection the weaker for never having 
known the high tide, or the stronger for not having 
felt the rcfluence ? — This temporary flooding of the 



68 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAOE. 

afibctions, (lo(\s it dcvaslaU^ us n^ganls ilurablc results, 
or (Iocs it cnric'li ? 

I tliink that \hc prcdpniinnnco, nmounling almost 
to universality, of the law of Nature which places 
us once iu our livi's at least iukIim" the doininiou of 
this passion, would allord of itstdf a strong presump- 
tion that souK^ heni^ficial r(\sult is to Ix^ hrought ahout 
by it. And if it ho adinitl(Ml (as without any ollencc 
to Cnlvin I ho[)(^ it well may) that the l)ctler part of 
most human heiugs is the larger part, it will follow 
that tliis temporary expansion and outburst of the 
wholo of the being, will bring a grcatxu' accession of 
good activities than of bad ; and as the first cry of 
the infant is ncu'cssary to bring the lungs into play, 
so the lirst love of tbo adult may, through a transitory 
disturbance, be designed to impart a luMiltby action 
to the moral and spiritual ualur(\ Tlu^ better the 
tree, the b(>tliM- of course will Ix^ tlu^ fruits; neither 
the rains of spring nor the glow of sununer will 
make grapes grow upon brand)l(>s; but wliatt^ver the 
fruits may be, the yield will ho larger after (n'(M*y 
seasonable operation of Natun^ has been undergone. 
\Vilh the few in \\lu>m envy, jealousy, suspicion, 
pride, and self-love are predominant, tluM-e may be 
an aggravation of these evil dispositions or of some 
of them ; but to them (and (lod be j)rais(Hl they arc 
the many) with whom hiunilitv, generosity, the love 



OF CHOICE IN MAURI ACE. irJ 

of Cod, and tlu; Ic^vo of Cod's crcalun.'S, lliotioli j,;irlly 
lal(!nl ixM'ljjips, is powrrfidly inli<"n^nl, tlio j):issi()n of 
love will bririff with it an c!nlar<r(;iri(ait and a dcicpcMiiiifr 
and strcnjrihoninjT of these hctlcr (donicnls, such as 
no other visitation (^f nuM'cly natural inHiKinccs, how- 
ever favonihly receiv(!d an<l (hilifully elH^rislK'd, could 
avail to produce. And when the passion has passed 
away, the enlargement of the nature will remain ; 
and as the better and more ahounding huinan l)(;ing 
will mala; th<; l)ett(!r and mon; abounding husband 
or wife, s(j will tlu; marriage which has be(!n preceded 
by a passion, Ix; a better marriage — other things 
alik,, — than that which has not — moro exalted, more 
genial, more aflluent in ain^ctions. 

If th(! passion have ended, not in a marriage, but in 
a disappointnuuit, the nature, if it have; stningth to b(%'ir 
the pressure, will bo more eimobled and purifuid by 
that than by success. Of the us(;s of adversity which 
are swcjet, none are sw(;eter than those whic-h grow 
out of disappointed love ; nor is there any greater 
mistake in contemplating the issues of life, than to 
suj)[)ose that baflled endeavors and disappointed hopes 
bear no fruils, because they d(j not bear those par- 
ticular fruits which were sought and sighed for : — 

' Tlic trc(; 
Sucks kindlier nurture Irorn a soil enriched 
By its own lallen leaves ; and uaxu is made, 



60 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

In heart and spirit, from diciduous hopes 
And things that seem to perish.' 

Indeed the power and spiritual efficacy of love can 
hardly be realized to its full extent without either 
disappointment, or at least reverses, vicissitudes, and 
doubts; and of the fact which Shakspeare observes, 
that 

' The course of true love never did run smooth,' 

perhaps this explanation may be given, — that rough- 
nesses are needful in order to make the love true ; 
and marriages that follow upon trouble, trial, and vicis- 
situde, will be more likely to be conservative of the 
love by which they have been achieved, than those 
which are merely the crown or coronal of a triumphal 
career in courtship : 

' The flowers in sunshine gathered soonest fade.' 

Amongst the obstructions which the course of love 
has commonly to encounter, one which is specified by 
Shakspeare is the opposition of parents ; and it is often 
one of the most perplexing problems in human life, to 
determine to w^iat length parental opposition should 
proceed in such cases. A moderate opposition can 
seldom do harm, unless there be positive perversity in 
the parties opposed, so that opposition shall be in itself 
a provocative to folly. Such perversity apart, a mode- 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 61 

rate opposition will suffice to set aside a weak love, 
whilst it will tend to consolidate a strong one ; and it 
will thus act favorably in either case, so far as regards 
that most essential element in all such matters, — the 
weakness or strength of the affection. In respect of 
an opposition beyond this, it seems hardly possible to 
generalize, the qualities of the persons and the special- 
ties of the cases being so all-important. In extreme 
youth, obedience should be the rule of the child. But 
so soon as the child shall have attained to a fair matu- 
rity of judgment, there is a moral responsibility for the 
just exercise of that judgment, which must not be over- 
laid by an exaggerated notion of filial duty. Of the 
members of a family it is for the benefit of all that 
each should act upon each with some degree, though 
with very different degrees, of controlling influence. 
The sons and daughters, when children no longer, are 
to demean themselves towards.the parents with humil- 
ity, deference, and a desire to conform, but not with 
an absolute subjection of the judgment and the will. 
There is such a thing as a spoilt parent. On the 
question of choice in marriage, as on other questions 
in which both child and parent are personally con- 
cerned, if the child presumptuously conceive that his 
judgment is mature when it is not mature, or that it is 
worthy to be weighed with his parents' when it is not 
worthy, he is culpable, of course ; being chargeable, 



62 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

not with more error of jiulgnieiit, but with the sin of 
presumption. On the other hand, if, in all humihty of 
heart and desire tt) be dutiful, he shall nevertheless 
clearly perceive, or think he perceives, that his judg- 
ment is the juster, and is guided by higher, purer, and 
more righteous views of life, it behoves him, after 
much patience, and the neglect of no endeavor to 
bring about a coincidence of judgment, to resist his 
parents' judgment, and give ellect to that which he 
conceives to be better ; and this for his parents' sake 
as well as for his own. We all need resistance to our 
errors on every side. ' Woe unto us when all men 
speak well of us ! ' and woe unto us, also, when all 
men shall give way to us ! It may be a sacred duty 
on the part of a child to give a helpful resistance to a 
parent, when the parent is the more erring of the two ; 
and the want of such resistance, especially on the part 
of daughters, (i'ov they are more prone than sons to 
misconceive their duties of this kind, or to fail in 
firnmess,) has often betrayed a parent into fatal errors, 
followed by lifelong remoi-se. Women, in a state of 
exaltation from excited feelings, imagining, because 
duty often requires self-sacrilice, that when thoy are 
sacrificing themselves they must needs be doing their 
duty, will often be capable of taking a resolution, 
when they are not callable of undergoing the conse- 
quences with fortitude. For it is one sort of strength 



OF CIIOICK IN MATIKIAGK. 63 

lliat is HMiuinMl (or nii act of licroisni ; anollicr, nud n 
much rarer sort, wliich is availnhlo for a life of ciulur- 
ance. l^rol)al)ly most j)co[)lc could quote instances 
within Ihcnr own knowledge, in which the daughtc^r 
has olx'ycd, and tiuMi losing her health, and with it 
perhaps her temper and her resignation, has died of 
what is called a broken heart ; thus, as it were, heap- 
ing coals of fire upon the parents' head. 

Hut if an unreasonable o|)position to a daughter\s 
choice be not lo prevail, I think that, on the; other 
hand, the parents, if their views of marriage he; [)iire 
fromworldlin(^ss, are justified in using a good deal of 
management — not more than they very often do us(;, 
but more than th(;y are wont to avow or than soci(My 
is wont to countenance, — with a vi(;w to putting their 
daughters in the way of such marriages as they can 
approve. It is the way of th(i world to give such 
management an ill nainci, — j)robal)ly because it is 
most used by those who abuse it to worldly purposes ; 
and I have heard a mother pique herself on never 
having taken a single step to get her daughters mar- 
ried, — which apj)eared to me to have been a derelic- 
tion of one of the most essential duties of a parent. 
If the moth(;r be wholly passiv(^ either the daughters 
must take stej)S and use management for tliemselves, 
(which is not desirable,) or the happiness and the most 
important interests of their lives, moral and spiritual, 



64 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

must be the sport of chance and take a course purely- 
fortuitous; and in many situations, where unsought 
opportunities of choice do not abound, the result may 
be not improbably such a love and marriage as the 
mother and every one else contemplates with astonish- 
ment. Some such astonishment I recollect to haye 
expressed on an occasion of the kind to an illustrious 
poet and philosopher, whose reply I have always borne 
in mind when other such cases have come under my 
observation : — * We have no reason to be surprised, 
unless we knew what may have been the young lady's 
opportunities. If Miranda had not fallen in with Fer- 
dinand, she would have been in love with Caliban.' 

But management, if it is to be recommended, must 
be good management, and not the managcmfent by 
which young ladies are hurried from ball-room to ball- 
room, so that a hundred prelibations may give one 
chance to be swallowed. A very few ball-rooms will 
afford the means of introduction and selection of ac- 
quaintances ; and the intercourse which, by imparting 
a real knowledge of the dispositions, will give the best 
facilities of choice, will be tliat which is withdrawn, by 
one remove and another, from gay metropolitan as- 
semblies — first, to intercourse in country places; sec- 
ondly, to domestic society. Our present manners 
admit, perhaps, too much freedom of intercourse in 
public, too little in private. The light familiarity of 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 65 

festive meetings is carried far enough, further than 
tends to attach ; but the graver intimacy is wanting. 
Milton complained that in his time choice in marriage 
was difficult, because there was not ' that freedom of 
access, granted or presumed, as may suffice to a per- 
fect discerning till too late.' * In our age the freedom 
of access is sufficient ; but the access is, for the most 
part, at times and places where nothing can be dis- 
cerned but the features of a restless and whirling life. 
And if Milton could say, ' Who knows not that the 
bashful muteness of a virgin may ofttimcs hide all the 
unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for 
conversation,' we, on the other hand, who cannot rea- 
sonably complain of the bashful muteness of the vir- 
gins, may be in our own way perplexed in the attempt 
to discover what is the life that lies beneath those 
dancing and glancing outsides of which we see so 
much. But the difficulty of managing well in this 
respect depends less on our manners in regard to 
the intercourse between girls and men, than on the 
general mode of living, which, in some sections of 
society, (not in all) tends to separate domestic from 
social life, and to subjugate the former to the latter. 

It may be observed, I think, that women of high 
intellectual endowments and much dignity of deport- 
ment, have the greatest difficulty in marrying, and 

• Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, ch. 3. 
5 



QQ OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

Stand most in need of a mother's help. And this, not 
because they are themselves fastidious, (for they are 
often as little so as any,) but because men are not 
humble enough to wish to have their superiors for 
their wives. 

Great wealth in a woman tends to keep at a dis- 
tance both the proud and the humble, leaving the 
unhappy live-bait to be snapped at by the hardy and 
the greedy. If the wealthy father of an only daugh- 
ter could be gifted with a knowledge of what parental 
care and kindness really is, it is my assured belief that 
he would disinherit her. If he leaves her his wealth, 
the best thing for her to do is to marry the most re- 
spectable person she can find of the class of men who 
marry for money. An heiress remaining unmarried 
is a prey to all manner of extortion and imposition, 
and with the best intentions becomes, through ill- 
administered expenditure and misdirected bounty, a 
corruption to her neighborhood and a curse to the 
poor; or if experience shall put her on her guard, 
she will lead a life of resistance and suspicion, to 
the injury of her own mind and nature. 

In the case, therefore, of either high endowments 
or great wealth in a daughter, the care of a parent 
is peculiarly needed to multiply her opportunities of 
making a good choice in marriage; and in no case 
can such care be properly pretermitted. 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 67 

When the mother takes no pains, the marriage of 
the daughter, even if not in itself ineligible, is likely to 
be unduly deferred. For the age at which marriages 
are to be contracted is a very material consideration. 
Aristotle was of opinion that the bridegroom should 
be thirty-seven years of age and the bride eighteen ; 
alleging physical reasons which I venture to think 
exceedingly inconclusive. Eighteen for the bride is 
the least to be objected to, and would yet be rather 
early in this climate. A girl of that age may be 
not absolutely unprepared for marriage ; but she has 
hardly had time for that longing and yearning affection 
which is to be her best security after. Sir Thomas, 
More, in accounting for Jane Shore's infidelity to her 
husband, observes, that ' foreasmuche as they wer 
coupled ere she wer wel ripe, she not very fervently 
loved for whom she never longed.' But whether or 
not the girl be to be considered ripe at eighteen, I 
know no good reason, moral or physical, why the 
man should withhold himself till seven-and-thirty, and 
many excellent reasons against it. Some few years 
of seniority on the part of the man, I do conceive 
to be desirable ; and on this, as well as on other 
grounds, the woman should marry young ; for if the 
woman were to be past her first youth and the man 
to be some years older, it follows that the man would 
remain longer unmarried than it is good for him to 



68 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

be alone. On the point of seniority, let us listen to 
the Duko and Viola — 

VuJce. ' Let still the woman take 

An older than herself ; so wears she to him, 
So sways she level in her husband's heart. 
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, 
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, 
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn 
Than women's are. 

Viola. I think it well, my Lord. 

Ditk(. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, 
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent : 
For women are as roses, whose fair flower 
Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour.' ♦ 

The woman should marry, therefore, rather before 
than after that eidniinating period of personal charm, 
which, varying inueh in ditlerent individuals, is but 
a short period in any, and occurs in early youth in 
almost all. She should marry bet^veen twenty and 
thirty years of age, but nearer tlie former than the 
latter period. Now the man at such an age would 
probably be too light for the man's part in marriage ; 
and the more so when marr\'ing a wife equally young. 
For when two very young people are joined together 
in matrimony, it is as if one sweet-pea should be 
put as a prop to another. The man, therefore, may 

* 'Twelfth Night,' Act ii. Sc. 4. 



OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 69 

be considered most marriageable wben lie is nearer 
thirty than twenty, or perhaps when he is a little 
beyond thirty. If his marriaj^e be deferred much 
longer, there is some danger of his becoming hardened 
in celibacy. In the case of a serious and thoughtful 
man, it need not be deferred so long : for in such 
a case, a remark made in a letter of Lord Bacon's 
will probably be verified — that a man finds himself 
seven years older the day after his marriage. 

In these times men are disposed, I think, to be 
rather too tardy than too precipitate in marrying. 
Worldly prudence is strong in us now, even to a 
vice; and a competency, or what is estimated to be 
a competency, is not attainable at a very early age. 
A circle of friends and relatives commonly resent, 
as an injury to themselves, a poor marriage contracted 
at an early age ; and not without reason, if the virtues 
of the parties contracting it are not such as to justify 
it. But that will be prudence in a prudent man which 
is imprudence in another; and one thing is certain, 
that the prudence which postpones marriage is ex- 
cessive to a vice when it involves other vices, and 
presents temptations less likely to be resisted than 
those to which a poor marriage lies open. 

There are other motives and circumstances besides 
those connected with prudence, which, in the case 
of men, militate against early marriages. If their 



70 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

first passion (as it happens with most first passions) 
have issued in a disappointment, and if they have 
passed through their disappointment without being 
betrayed, by the heart's abhorrence of its vacuum, 
into some immediate marriage of the pis-aller kind, 
resorted to for mere purposes of repose, they will 
probably find that a first seizure of the kind guarantees 
them for a certain number of years against a second. 
In the meantime, the many interests, aspirations, and 
alacrities of youth, its keen pursuits and its fresh 
friendships, fill up the measure of life, and make 
the single heart sufficient to itself. It is when these 
things have partly passed away and life has lost 
something of its original brightness, that men begin 
to feel an insufficiency and a want. I have known 
it to be remarked by a Roman Catholic priest, as 
the result of much observation of life amongst his 
brethren, that the pressure of their vow of celibacy 
was felt most severely towards forty years of age. 

If a man have fairly passed that period without 
marrying or attempting marriage, then, I think, or 
very soon after, he may conclude that there is no 
better fortune in store for him, and dispose himself 
finally for the life celibate. 

' Till age, refrain not j but if old, refrain,' 

says one of the shrewdest of the unpoetical poets.* 

* Crabbe. 



OF CIIOICK IN MAURI AGK. 71 

And this abstinence from marriage on the j)art of ohl 
men, is to he enjoined, not only on tlieir own aceount, 
but on aceount of the ofTspring to whieli such mar- 
riages may give hirdi. Tlie sort of age in youth, and 
the weakness of constitution which is ohscrva])le in the 
ofTspring of old men, involves national as well as indi- 
vidual evil, because it tends to degeneracy of the race ; 
and amongst the Romans, who were careful of their 
breed, there was a law, the Lex Pajrpia, which for- 
bade the marriage of a man of more than sixty y('ars 
of age with a woman of less than fifty. If the old 
man have male issue, there will generally be further 
the evils to the son of an ill-tend(;d minority and a 
premature independence. 

The marriages of old men to young women are, for 
the most part, as objectionable in their motives as in 
their results ; and the mistake of such marriages is 
generally as great as the moral misfeasance. There 
is no greater error of age, than to suppose that it can 
recover the enjoyment of youth by possessing itself 
of what youth only can enjoy ; and age will never 
appear so unlovcily, as when it is seen with such an 
ill-sorted accompaniment — 

' A chaplct of forced flowers on Winter's brow 
Seems not less iniiarmonious to me 
Than the untimely snow on the green leaf.' 



78 OF CHOICE IN MARRIAGE. 

For the young women who niako such marriages, 
there is sometimes more to be said than for the old 
men. When the motives arc mercenary, there is 
nothing to be said for them ; and but little when the 
case is one of weak consent to the mercenary baseness 
of parents, or when they sacrifice themselves (as they 
will sometimes allege) in a rich alliance for the relief 
of a large f\imily of destitute brothers and sisters. 
These are but beggarly considemtions, and might bo 
equally plead in defence of a less disguised pros- 
titution. But a case will sometimes occur in which 
a young woman is dazzled by great achievements or 
renown ; and what is horoical or illustrious may inspire 
a feeling which, distinct though it be from that which 
youth inspires in youth, is yd not unimaginative, 
and may sufiicc to sanctify the marriage vow. And 
there is another case, not certainly to be altogether 
vindicated, and yet not to bo visited with nnieh harsh- 
ness of censure, in which a woman who has had her 
heart broken, seeks, in this sort of marriage, such an 
asylum as, had she been a Roman Catholic, she might 
have found in a convent. 

Marriages of the old with the old are rare, and arc 
thought by some people to be ridiculous. They do 
not, however, fall within the purview of the Lex Pap- 
pia, or of any other prohibition that 1 am acquainted 
with, and 1 hardly know why they should be so unfre- 



OF CHOICE IN MARKIAfJE. 73 

qucrit as they arc. Solitude is ill suited to old age, 
and the course of circumstances tends too often to 
leave the old in solitude. Cases must be contirnially 
occurring, in wliicli it would b(! for the comfort and 
happiness of old friends of diflerent sexes to live (o- 
gether; and if they cannot do so conveniently or 
creditably without being married, I know not why they 
should be laughed at for marrying. It must be, no 
doubt, a totally difTerent connection from that which is 
formed in earlier life ; and it is one which might be, 
perhaps, more fitly ratified by a civil contract than by 
a religious ceremony; but the lawful rights of a wife 
are necessary to the female? friend, i»i order that she 
may be regarded with due respect by \\v,r husband's 
relatives and by the worhl, and in order that she may 
have authority in her household : and if the marriage 
bo ascribed to this reasonable motive, instead of sup- 
posing any which would be unn.'asonabUi and ridicu- 
lous, it may be regarded, I think, as a wise and com- 
mendable species of arrangement. 



OF MIS DOM 



^^"lSlH>M is not tho saiuo >vith uiulorstaiuliiij;, taliMits, 
capacity, ability, sai:;arity, stM»so, or pnuliMU'o — not 
{\\c sanu' with anv ono ot' thoso ; niMthor w ill all thoso 
togotlior HKiko it up. It is that oxiM-rist^ oC tho roason 
into whioh tho hi>art ontoi-s — a struotiuv o( tho nndor- 
stanilini:; rising out of tho moral anil spiritual nature. 

It is t'or this i-auso that a hii::h otiUm' i^l' wisdoni — 
that is. a highly intoUootual wisiKnu — is still nunv 
ran^ than a high onlor oi' gonius. W'hon thoy roach 
tho vory higlu^st onhM* tlu^y aro ouo ; for oaoh inolutlos 
tlio iMhor, anil intollootual groatuoss is niatohoil with 
moral strength. r>ut thoy hanlly ovor roaoh so high, 
inasnmoh as groat intolloot, aooonling to tho ways of 
Proviilonoo. almost always brings along with it groat 
infirmitios — or. at loast, infinnitios which appear groat 
owing to tho soalo ol' o[HM"ation ; anil it is certainly 
exposed to unusual temptations; for as powiM- ami piv- 
cminence lie bet\>re it, so ambition attends it, which, 
whilst it determines the will and strengthens tho uc- 
tivities, inevitablv weakens the moral tabric. 



OF WIHJiOM. 75 

WJHrJorn \h corrupted by arnbilion, f:vr;ri w}ir;ri Ojc 
fjualify of thf; amhition \h intollootual. For ambition, 
even of tbiH quality, in but a form of H^;lf-lovo, which, 
Becking gratification in llic corifK-iouHDCHH of intellec- 
tual power, is loo rnueb rjr;|ij/ht.ed with tlje exercise to 
liiive a Hinglr; and paramount regard to the end ; and 
it is not according to wisdom that the end — that jh, the 
moral and Hpiritual con.sequences — should HufTer dero- 
gation in fw.vor of tlie intellectual meann. God in 
love, and God is light; whence it rcHultn tliat love \h 
light; and it is only by following the effluence of that 
light, that intellectual power issues into wisdom. The 
intellectual power which loses that light and i«sue» 
into intellectual pride, is out of the way to wisdom, 
und will not attain even U) int^jllectual greatness. For 
though many arts, giftJ*, and att;AinmentH may co-cxi«t 
in much force with intellectual pride, an open great- 
ness cannot ; and of all tlje correspondences l>^;lsveen 
the moral and intellectual ruiture, there i« none more 
direct and immediate than that of humility with ca[;;x- 
ciousness. If pride of intellect be indulged, it will 
mark oiit to a man conscious of great talerjts the circle 
of his own intellectual experiences as the only one in 
wliich he can keenly recognise and appreciate the 
intellectual universe; and there is no order of iitU-A- 
lectual men which stands in a more strict limitation 
than that of the man who cannot conceive what he 



76 OF WISDOM. 

does not oontain. Siu'li \\\cu \\\\\ ofttMitimos dazzle 
the worlii, and i^xoroiso in llioir day and »]jonoration 
nnu'h influonci^ on the many wlioso rangr is no wider 
tlian ll\oirs. and whoso fowo is loss; hut tho want of 
spiritual and inia«:;inativo wisdom will stop thtMU thm-o ; 
and [\\c undoi-standings iVoni wlnoh mankind will sock 
II ptM-n\an(Mit and authontio piidaiu'o, will ho thoso 
whioh havo hoon oxaltod hy lovo and onlargml hy 
huniility. 

It' wisdom ho doloatod hy andtitiiMi and stdf-lovo 
when thoso an^ oooupiod with tho urmv inward con- 
sciousnoss of intoUootual powor, still moro is it so 
wluMi thoy aiv oai:;or {o ohtain vooognition ami admim- 
tion of it fnnn without. AUmi who aro aooustomod to 
write or spoak for tMloot, may write or speak what is 
wise from time to time, heeause they may he eapahle 
of thinking and intelleetually adopting what is wiso : 
hut th(\v will not ho wisi^ men ; het-ause \\\c \o\c of 
Cod. the love oi' man, and the love oC truth not having 
the mastery with them, the growth and struetnre of 
their minds must needs he perverted if not stunted. 
Thenee it is that Si) many men aix^ ohserved to sjieak 
wisidy ami yet aet foolishly ; they aiv not defieient in 
their undei-standings, hut tho wisdom oi' the heart is 
wanting to their ends and ohjeots, and to those feelings 
which have the direction of their acts. And if they 
do speak wisely, it is not heeause they are wise; for 



OF WISDOM. 77 

tl)f; permanent shape arifl organization of tlie mind 
proceeds from wliat we feel and (Jo, and not from 
what we Hpeak, write, or think. Thrire is a great 
vohirnr; of truth in thf; arlrnonitJon wliifdj teaehe-H uh 
that the spirit of oh';dienee is U) }>re[>are thr; way, 
actiofj to eome next, and that krjowledgr; is nf>t pre- 
cedent to these, hut eonserpjent : * Do tlie will of my 
J'alhf;r whieh is in heaven, arid iIjou slialt know of the 
doctrine.' 

Those wlio are nnjeh conversant with intellectual 
men will ohserve, I think, that tlie particular action of 
self-love hy whieh their minds are most fn^quently 
warped from wisdom, is that whieh hrjjon^^s to a j^ride 
and pleasure taken in the exercise of the argumenta- 
tive faculty; whence it arises that that faculty is en- 
ahled to assert a f>redominance over its hettf;rs. With 
fjueh men, the elemf;nts oi' a question whieh will make 
c/reet in argument, — those whieh are, so far as thf;y 
go, demonstrative, — will he rated ahovo their value; 
and those whieh are matter of prof)ortion and degree, 
not palj)able, ponderahle, or easily or shortly produ- 
cil)le in wonls, or whieh are matters of moral r.-stima- 
lion and o[)tional opinion, will go for less than they 
are worth, because they are luA available to ensure 
the victory or grace the triumph of a disputant. 

In some discussions, a wise man will be silenced by 
ftrgumerjtalion, o/dy because he knows that the rpjes- 



78 OF WISDOM. 

lion should be determined by considerations which lio 
beyond the reach of argumentative exhibition. And 
indeed, in all but purely scientific questions, arguments 
are not to be submitted to by the judgment as first in 
command ; rather they arc to be used as auxiliaries 
and pioneers ; the judgment should profit by them to 
the extent of the services they can render, but after 
their work is done, it should come to its conclusions 
upon its own free survey. I have seldom known a 
man with great powers of argumentation abundantly 
indulged, who could attain to an habitually just judg- 
ment. In our courts of law, where advocacy and 
debate are most in use, ability, sagacity, and intellec- 
tual power flourish and abound, whilst wisdom is said 
to have been disbarred. In our houses of parliament 
tlie case is somewhat otherwise ; the silent members, 
and those who take but little jiart in debate, and indeed 
the country at large which may be said to listen, exer- 
cise some subduing influence over the spirit of argu- 
mentation, and the responsibility for results restrains 
it, so that here its predominance is much less than in 
the courts of law ; yet even in the houses of parliament 
wisdom has been supposed to have less to say to the 
proceedings than a certain species of courage. 

Ambition and self-love will commonly derange that 
proportion between the active and passive understand- 
ing which is essential to wisdom, and will lead a 



OF WISDOM. 79 

man to value thoughts and opinions less according 
to their worth and truth, than according as they arc 
his own or anotlier's. The ohjcction made hy Brutus 
to Cicero in the play, — that he 'would never follow 
anything which other men began ' — points to one 
corruption operated by self-love upon a great under- 
standing. Some preference a man may reasonably 
accord to what is the growth of his own mind apart 
from its absolute value, on the ground of its specific 
usefulness to himself; for what is nature to the soil 
will thrive better and bear more fruit than what has 
been transplanted : but, on the other hand, if a man 
would enlarge the scope and diversify the kinds of 
his thoughts and contemplations, he should not tliirdc 
too much to apprehend nor talk too much to listen. 
He should cherish the thoughts of his own begetting 
v/ith a loving care and a temperate discipline — they 
are the family of his mind and its chief reliance — 
but he should give a hospitable reception to guests 
and to travellers with stories of far countries, and the 
family should not be suficred to crowd the doors. 

Even without the stimulant of self-love, some minds, 
owing to a natural redundance of activity and excess 
of velocity and fertility, cannot be sufficiently passive 
to be wise. A capability to take a thousand views 
of a subject is hard to be reconciled with directness 
and singleness of judgment; and he who can find a 



80 OK wisnoiM. 

giviit dci\\ io s;iy for any vit^Nv, will not o^\c\\ j^o the 
Ktraiglit road to tlu* t)iU' viow \\\i\\ is right. If sul)tl(My 
ho luliloil to t^xulxM'aiu'o, \\ic iu(lij;nuM»t is still inoro 
ciidungoivil — 

'Tell Wit hi)\v i)ft .she wrunj^U's 
In lickol iH)ints of niconoss, 
Toll Wisdoju she cntiinj^les 
llersolf in ovcr-wisonoss.' * 

r>ut wlun srlf-lovo is not at the n^ot, tluMV is htMtt^r 
\\opc for wisdom. Nature proaonts us with various 
walks ot" iiUolliH-tual lifo, and sui'h a siMootion may 
1)0 madi^ as shall ronilor a disproportion of tho aotivo 
\o tho passivo inttdhvt loss danji;tM'ous. Spooulativo 
wisiion\ will sudor h^ss hy oxot^ss of thinUiui; than 
praotioal wisdom. Thoro aro tiolds to he fouij;ht, in 
whioh a wido ran^o is moro t^sstMitial than an unerring 
niui. In some n^gions wo are to eultivato the surfaee ; 
in otluM"s to sink the shaH. No one i'ltolloot ean he 
eipially availahU^ for opposite avooatious, and wlu»n> 
thert> is no intorforouoo of self-love, wisdom will be 
attained throu«j;h a wise ehoiee of work. C^ne eminent 
man oi' our times has saiil of auothiu', that 'seienee 
was his l"orte, and i>nu\iseienee his foible.' Init that 
instanee was not an extreme oui\ Crises have oe- 
eurred in which wisdoui has sutlered total overthrow : 

• Sir WalUT KaltMirh. 



the grc;aU;Hl inff;llf;r.t. Mri<l ihf; iir<;'.i.\(:H\. folly Ijjivf; ln-cu 
kriowft fo »nr;';f ; .-jrifl IIj'; univorHaliHt, who liandloH 
cvorytliinj^ and ornbr.'ircH nolliing, hnn l>f;';n Hf;r;n to 
pnHH into a })ijrHijfr r>r tlif; n»cro vaniti*^ and frJvolilio« 

of irjtf;Ilr:r,t.iia| (liH)*lay. 

If, })ow<:Vf,r, a ffinn of m;niiJH hf; ror1.unaf/;Iy frrio 
from .'ifrifiitifui, t}if;r'; i-i ycA '<m()\]i('.r <:w,\i\y whiclj 
will r,orrirnorily lif, in waif, for Iiin wi.sflorn ; to wit, 
a j^roat raparjly of ':fiioyrn»;fil. 'riii:i ^ymrirally a<> 
COrripanif;H ^f;niu.'i, arid is, [*';r}iap:-;, llio ^^n;al.f;f;t of 
all trials to th(; moral arnJ Hpirilual }i';arl. It waH 
a trial too Hfivoro cwcn for Sf>lomon, 

* wliosf! hf;!jrl, lhouf.;h large, 
\W.f/u\\i-i\ ljy fair IdolatrcsNCK, fcJl 
'J'o ifjols foul.' * 

*V\\(', tr;m[»fation hy wlii^-Ji such a man is a^;Hailf;d, r:on- 
BiHtH in ima^inin^^ that Ik; has within hirns'dr and by 
virtue of liiw tf;m|jf:ramf;nt, sourcos of joy altorff;thf;r 
indf;pf;ridf;nt of r.f>ndijct and circurnstancfjH. It is truo 
that hf; has lhf;HO Ho\irr/-.H o\\ thi.s ijnf:oriditiorjal tonuro 
for a tirrK; ; and it is owinf.*; to this wi;ry truth that }ii,4 
futurity iH in danj^'ir, — not in ro.spoct of windom only, 
but alHO in r<-M\)<:<'X of ha[>[>inf;ss. And if wo look to 
rccordod examples, wf; shall find that a ^^roat capacity 
of enjoyment docs ordinarily hrinr^ about the destruc- 

* Paradise Loft. 



82 OF WISDOM 

tion of onjovineiit in its own ulterior consequences, 
having uprooted wisdom by the way. 

A man of genius, so gifted — or, let us rather 
sav, so tempted — lives, until the consummation ap- 
proaches, as if he possessed some elixir or phylactery, 
reckless o( consequences, because his happiness, be- 
ing so inward to his nature, seems to be inherent and 
indefeasible. Wisdom is not wanted. The intellect, 
perhaps, amidst the abundance o\' its joys, rejoices in 
wise contemplations ; but wisdom is not adopted and 
domesticated in the mind, owing to the fearlessness of 
the heart. For wisdom will have no hold on the heart 
in which jov is not tempered by fear. The fear of the 
Lord, we know, is the beginning of it; and some hal- 
lowing and chastening influences of fear will always 
go along with it. Fear, indeed, is the mother of fore- 
sight ; spiritual fear, of a foresight that reaches beyond 
the grave ; temporal fear, of a foresight that lalls 
short ; but without fear there is neither the one fore- 
sight nor the other; and as pain has been truly said 
to be the deepest thing in our nature, so is it fear 
that will bring the depths of our nature wiUiin our 
knowledge : — 

' "What sees rejoicing genius in the Earth ? 
A thousand meadows with a thousand herds 
Freshly luxuriant in a May-day dawn ; 
A thousand ships that caracole and prance 



OF WISDOM. 83 

With freights of gold upon a sunny sea ; 

A thousand gardens gladdened by all flowers, 

That on the air breathe out an odorous beauty.' 

Genius may see all this and rejoice ; but it will not 
exalt itself into wisdom, unless it see also the meadow 
in the livid hues of winter, the ship under bare poles, 
and the flower when the beauty of the fashion of it 
perishes. 

It is true, however, that the cases are rare and 
exceptional, in which this dangerous capacity of en- 
joyment is an unbroken habit, so as to bring a steady 
and continuous pressure upon tlie moral mind. A 
great capacity of suffering belongs to genius also ; and 
it has been observed that an alternation of joyfulness 
and dejection is quite as characteristic of the man of 
genius as intensity in either kind. Doubtless these 
alternations will greatly enlarge his knowledge, both 
of Man and of the universe. The many moods of his 
own mind will give him a penetrating and experienced 
insight into many minds ; and he will contemplate the 
universe and all that goes on in it from many points 
of view. Moreover, it is by reaction from the extreme 
of one state, that the mind receives the most powerful 
impulse towards another — in resilience that it has its 
plenary force. But though these alternations of excess 
do thus enlarge and enrich the understanding, and 
minister to wisdom so far forth, they must yet, by the 



S^l OF wisroM. 

sluvks Nvhii-h thoy oooaslon to l\\c inoral will, ilo injurv 
on tho wliolo to that oomposito oilifioo, buill up ot' the 
moral and national niiml. in whioh Wisdom lias her 
(Iwollini;. Tho injufv is not so iijivat as in iho other 
oaso : bottor aiv >vintor ami sunnnor tor tho mind than 
tho torrid /.one — foasts and lasts than a piM'potnal 
plontv — but cither way the temj)er;iment ol' genius is 
harvlly ever favorable to wisdom; that is, the highest 
order of gtMiius, or that which includes wisdom, is o( 
all things tho most rare. 

On tho other hand, wisdom without gt^nius (a far 
more piveious git't than genius without wisdom) is, by 
God's blessing upon the humble and loving lieart, 
though not as ot'ten met with as * the i^rdinary o( 
Nature's sale-work,' yet not alti^geihor raiv ; t'or the 
desiix? to be right will go a givat way towarils wis- 
dom, lutelleetual guiilanee is the less needed where 
theiv is little to lead astray — wheiv humility lets the 
lieart loose to the impulses of love. That we ean Ih^ 
wise by impulse will seem a paradox to some ; but it 
is a part of that true dtvtrine whieh tmees wisdom to 
the moral as well as the intelleetual mind, and more 
surely to tho former than to the latter — one of those 
truths whieh is ivoognised when we look into our 
nature through the elearness of a poetic spirit : — 

* Momonis there are in lite — alas how lew ! — 
Wheu casting cold prudential doubts aside, 



OF WISI>OM. 85 

We take a f.;r;ncrous impulse for our ;^uidc, , 
And followifjj.5 promptly what the heart thinks bcht, 

Commit to i'roviflence the rest ; 
Sure that no after-reckoning will arise 
or hhame or sorrow, for the heart is wise. 

And happy ihey wlio thus in faith obey 
Their better nature : err sometimes they may, 

And some sad thouj^hts lie heavy in the breast, 
Such as by hope deceived are left behind ; 

IJut like a shadow these will pass away 
From the pure sunshine of the peaceful mind.' * 

Tho (\(j<'Anr\<i (){' wisdom by irnpulso is no doubt 
liable to bo rniicb rfji.sus^^d and rniwxppliod. Tho right 
to rest upon sncli a crood aocruoH orjjy to ihoso who 
havo so trainod ihoir naturo as to ))(t cntillod to trust 
it. It is tho irnpiilso of tlio ha/rUual hoart wliioh the 
judgffiont may fairly follow upon o<;casion — oi' tho 
heart which, being habitually humble and loving, has 
been framed by love to wisdom. Some such fashion- 
ing love will always effect; for love cannot exist 
without solicitude, solicitude brings thoughtfulness, 
and it is in a thoughtful love that tlie wisdom of 
the heart consists. The impulse of such a heart will 
tixke its shape and guidance from the very mould in 
which it is cast, without any application of the reason 
express ; and the most inadvr;rt,ent motion of a wise 

• Southey's Oliver J\"ticraan. 



8G OF WISDOM. 

hearty will for t ho most jvirt he wisoly iliivctod ; 
pnnitlontlally, lot lis vatlior say: for rrovlilonoo has 
no more oiniiuMit soat than in tho wisdom of the 
lioart. 

Wisdom hy impnlso. tlion, is to ho tnistoil in hy 
those only .who have iiahitually usoil thoir roason to 
tho fnll extent of its powoi-s in forminj; the heart and 
oultivatiug- tho judiimont, wliilst, owinix to its oonstitii- 
tional iK^fioionoy. or to its pt\*uliaritv (for the reason 
may he unservieeahle from other eauses than defioien- 
ry), they aiv eonsoious that their judgment is likely to 
ho ratlior perplexed than cleared hy much thinking on 
questions on whioh they are ealKnl upon to aot or 
decide. Those in whom tlio meditative faculty is 
peculiarly stn.ing, will often find themselves in this 
predicament; witness Christopher llervie's com- 
plaint : — 

' One while T think ; and then T i\m in pain 
To think l\o\v to nnihink that thonght again.' * 

And they whose delihemtivo judgment is weak and 
indecisive tVom a natural debility of the rtwson, may 
act fivm impulse, and even though the consequences 
Ik^ evil, may Ih^ hold to he wise according to their 
kind. For the coui-so they took may have boon the 
isest for them, being founded upon a just moasuiT- 



^ 



* The Synagogue, 41. 



OF WISDOM. 



87 



ment of the insufficiencies of their understanding. 
And those who can take this just measurement, and 
holding their opinions with due diffidence, yet act in 
love and failh and without fear, may be wise of heart 
though erring in judgment; and though not gifted with 
intellectual wisdom, may yet he deemed to have as 
much understanding as innocence has occasion for. 

Upon this, however, the question will arise, whether 
errors of the judgment are, as such, absolutely void 
of offence ; and whether he who has committed them 
may look back upon them, whatever may have been 
their consequences, without any compunctious visitings. 
An eminent statesman is said to have averred, that 
when he was conscious of having taken a decision 
with all due care and consideration, to the best of his 
judgment and with the best intentions, he never looked 
back to it with a moment's regret, though the result 
might prove it to have been wholly erroneous. This 
is a frame of mind highly conducive to civil courage, 
and therefore not without its advantages in political 
life. But it is not easily conducive to wisdom. Nor, 
perhaps, in this unqualified form, is it to be altogether 
vindicated in morals. At all events, so much regret 
mirrht be felt, if no more, as would suffice to awaken 
some self-questionings, not merely as to the specific 
moral rectitude accompanying or proximately pre- 
ceding the particular act, but as to that general and 



68 OF WISDOM. 

life-long training of the heart to wisdom, which gives 
the best assurance of specific results, and of which, 
therefore, specific failuivs should suggest the de- 
ficiency. Some short-coniiugs oi' tliis kind there must 
of course be in all human beings, and \ho\ should l>o 
at all times aware of it; but it is in the order of 
Nature that this consciousness should be quickened 
from time to time by the contemplation oi' evil con- 
sequences arising from specitic errors o( judgment, 
however innocent in themselves; which contemplation, 
accompanied with a natural ivgret, constitutes what 
may be called a repentance of the undei-standing — 
not easily to be escaped by a plain man. nor properly 
to be Repudiated by a philosopher. 

Yet when the consequences of an error o( judgment 
are irivmediablc, how often are those who would ani- 
madvert upon it, met with the admonition to ' let tho 
past be past :' as if the }vist had no relations with the 
future : and as if the experience of our errors of 
judgment, and the inquisition into their sources, did 
not, by its vei*y painfulness, ellect the deepest cultiva- 
tion o( the undei-standiug, — that cultivation whereby 
what is irremediable is itself converted into a rem- 
cdy. 

The main scope and design of this disquisition 
having been to inculcate that wisdom is still nioro 
essentially a moral and spiritual than it is lui intellcc- 



OF WISDOM. 89 

tual attribute, that genius can mount to wisflorn only 
by Jaof^b's ladder, and that knowledge can only be 
converted into wisdom by an application of the heart, 
I cannot better close it than with that declaration of 
the jialure of wisdom which is delivered in the 28th 
chfipter of the book of Job : — 

* Whf;nce then cometh wisdom ? and where is the 
place of understanding ? 

* Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and 
kept close from the fowls of the air. 

* Destruction and death say, we have heard the fame 
thereof with our ears. 

* (iod understandeth the way thereof, and he know- 
eth the place thereof. 

* For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth 
under the whole Heaven; 

'To make the weight for the winds; and he weigh- 
eth the wate-rs by measure. 

' When he made a decree for the rain, and a way 
for the lightning of the thunder : 

* Then did he see it, and declare it ; he prepared it, 
yea, and searched it out. 

* And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the 
Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil is un- 
derstanding.' 



CHILDREN 



From the complaints which everybody brings against 
everybody in the matter of the management of chil- 
dren, one might be led to suppose that such a thing as 
good management of them did not exist amongst man- 
kind. And no doubt this is so far true, that on a 
subject on which so many and such various kinds of 
errors may be committed, the best management can 
be but very imperfect, and those who are complained 
of should be willing to listen, in the assurance that 
real errors there are, and for the chance of those being 
the errors that are hit upon and pointed out. 

But remonstrance and admonition, whether listened 
to or not, seem in general to be of as little avail on 
these questions as theories and doctrines; and from 
the uselessness of all these, and from the fact that 
thoughtful and cultivated people are seen, not unfrc- 
quently, to get as wrong as others, it may be inferred 
that the most essential qualifications for training a child 
well, are not of a nature to be communicated by books 



CHILDREN. 91 

or lectures on education. They arc, 1st, The desire 
to be right in the matter ; 2d, Sense ; 3d, Kindness ; 
and 4th, Firnnness. 

Where these are wanting, the wisest admonitions 
in the world will be of no other use than to relieve 
the mind of the person who throws them away. 

Theories, however, seem to have more poNYcr to 
pervert the natural understanding, in this case, than 
they have to enlighten it. The doctrine of an eminent 
writer (of a generation now nearly gone), that a child 
should be reasoned into obedience, had, in its day, 
more of a misleading efficacy than might have been 
thought possible ; and many a parent was induced 
to believe that a child should be taught to give its 
obedience, not because it was obedience, but because 
the thing ordered was reasonable ; the little casuists 
and controversialists being expected to see the reason 
of things as readily in real life, as in the dialogues 
between Tutor and Charles. The common sense of 
mankind has now made an end of this doctrine, and 
it is known now, as it was before the transit of that 
eminent person, that obedience — prompt, implicit, un- 
reasoning, and almost unconscious — is the first thing 
to be taught to a child, and that he can have no 
peace for his soul without it. 

The notion of setting up the reason to be the pivot 
of humanity from the cradle forwards, belongs to a 



93 



CHILDREN. 



generation of fallacies which have returned to the 
dust from which they camo ; but it included one error 
in theories of education wliich will be found to belong 
to many that are still iwtant : the error of assuming 
that the pariMit is to he perfect. Under the reason- 
ing regimen, what was to happen when the parent's 
reasous were had ? And in like manner, with respect 
to many less uimatural systems which are recom- 
mended as if they were of universal a])plicability, 
the question may bo asked, Will most parents be 
competent to give effect to them ? And, hearing in 
mind tiie not inconsiderable number of mankind who 
labor under imperfections of the understanding or 
other disqualifying defects, I believe we shall find 
that a few strong instincts and a few plain rules, 
are all that can be appealed to for general guidance 
in the management of children. 

That iirst and foremost rule of exacting obedience, 
is so far from being subject to the condition of showing 
reasons, that I believe a parent with a strong will, 
although it be a perverse one, will train a child 
better than a jiarent of a reasonable mind, tainted 
by infirmity of purpose. For as ' Obedience is better 
than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,* 
so an authority which is absolute by virtue of its 
own inherent strength, is better than one which is 
shaken by a reference to ends and purposes, and by 



CHILDREN. 



93 



reasonable (lou])ls as to whether they arc the best 
and most useful. Nor will the parent's perversity, 
unless it be unkind or ill-tenripered, occasion the child 
half so much uneasiness in the one case, as the child 
will sulDsr from those perversities of its own which 
will spring up in the other? For habits of instant 
and mechanical obedience are those that give rest to 
the child, and spare its health and temper; whilst a 
recusant or dawdling obedience will keep it distracted 
in proi)ensity, bringing a perpetual pressure on its 
nerves, and consec[uently on its mental and bodily 
strength. 

To enforce this kind of obedience, our most clTica- 
cious instrum(!nt is a clear and determinate manner; 
because with children at least this is the most signifi- 
cant expression of an authoritative will. But it is 
an instrument which those only can employ who arc 
authoritative; by temperament; for an assumed man- 
ner, or one which is not true to the temperament, 
will be of no avail. Those parents who are not gifted 
with this temperament and this manner, myst needs, 
if they do their duty, have recourse to punishments; 
of which, in the case of most children, those arc 
best which are sharp and soon over. And let not 
the parents think that by a just and necessary amount 
of punishment they run any risk of impairing the 
child's affections. The risk is far greater of impairing 



94 CHILDREN. 

them by indulgence. A spoilt child never loves its 
mother; never at least with the same measure of 
love as if it were unspoilt. And there is in human 
nature an essential though somewhat mysterious con- 
nection of love with fear, which, though chiefly 
recognised in the relations between man and God, 
is also discernible in the relations between man and 
man, and especially in those between parent and 
child. Love in either relation is deepened by some 
degree — not oppressive or too disturbing — some 
slight degree of fear; and the very truth of the 
text, that ' perfect love casteth out fear,' shows that 
fear must be there before the love is made perfect. 
Therefore the parent who shrinks from inflicting just 
and proper punishments upon a child, deprives that 
child not only of the rest to be found in duty and 
obedience, but also of the blessings of a deeper 
love. 

There is another way not much adverted to by 
blind parents, in which children arc injured by undue 
indulgence. It prevents them from benefiting by 
the general tendency of mankind to have kind and 
friendly feelings towards children. Such feelings are 
checked and abated when it is seen that children 
are unduly favored by their parents. And when the 
rights and comforts of others are sacrificed for their 
sake, instead of being objects for the protection and 



CHILDKEN. 95 

good offices of all around them, they become odious 
in the same manner as princes' favorites do, and 
their parents' sins arc visited upon them. 

Then the repugnance wliich people feel towards 
the objects of an unjust partiality, provokes them 
to exaggerate the demerits of the children, — not 
probably to the face of the parents, but in a way 
to go round to them, — whereupon the parents come 
in with some show of reason as protectors of injured 
innocence, and fortify themselves in their own de- 
lusions by detecting injustice in the views of others. 
It is not the nature of mankind to be unjust to 
children, and where parents find this injustice to 
prevail, they should look for the source of it in 
their children or in themselves. 

Indeed, it is the nature of mankind to be only 
too kind to children, and to take too much notice 
of them ; and this is a reason for not throwing them 
too much in the way of strangers and casual visitors. 
When the visitors are intelligent, and the parents 
are not the sort of people to whom flattery is accept- 
able, the children may be no worse for meeting the 
visitors, though they should never be sent for to be 
shown. But when the parents are known to have 
open ears for the praises of their children, there are 
hardly any strangers so careful and conscientious as 
not to say what is expected of them, and very many 



96 CHILDREN, 

will i-arry thoii* MaiulishnuMits to an exlivnio of gross- 
ncss ami falseness. A oonsiileratc visitor will observe 
the eouihiet of a judieious parcnt towards a eliild, 
and be guid(\l hy it : but \\\c instances arc far more 
frequent in wbieb the I'olly o( injudieious jiarents is 
unserupulonsly abetteil by the levity o( t>thers ; and 
the only consolation fi)r a rational bystander is that 
the childivn may havc^ more sense than their flatterers 
anil more diseernnuMit than their parents, and be 
unflattertHl and ill-pUviseil (as will sometinies haj>pen) 
by these coarse attempts at adulation. 

It is selfishness on the part of parcnts which «j:ives 
rise to undue indulixonce of children, — the selfishness 
of saerilu-iui; those (ov wIumu they care less to those 
t'er whom they care uhmv ; and the selfivshness of 
the paivnt for the child will invariably produce 
selfishness o( the child lor himselt'. A spoilt child 
is never generous. And selfishness is induced in a 
child not only by \oo much indulgence, but even 
by too much attention. It will be most for a child's 
happiness and well-being, both present and to come, 
thai he should teel himselt', in ivspect to comlorts 
and enji^yments, the most insignificant person in the 
house. In that case he w ill have his own resouives, 
which will be more available to him than any wliieh 
perpetual attention can minister; he will be subject 
to fewer discontents : and his atfections w ill be more 



CHILDREN. 97 

cultivated by tiio occasional tokens of kindness which 
a contented child will naturally receive in sufficient 
abundance, than they would be by continual endeavors 
to make him happy. 

And if continual attention to making him happy 
will not produce happiness, neither will continual at- 
tention to making him good produce goodness. For 
if the child feels that there is some one incessantly 
occupied widi his happiness and goodness, he will 
come to be incessantly occupied with himself. Some- 
thing must be left in a spirit of faith and hope to 
Nature and God's providence. Parents arc the in- 
struments, but they are not to be all in all. Room 
must be left for some liberty of action, for many 
an untended impulse, for self-reliance, for temptations 
and trials, with their natural results of victory with 
self-respect, or defeat with remorse. Cy such treat- 
ment the child's moral nature, being amply exercised, 
will be seasonably strengthened ; and when he comes 
into the world as a man, he will come with a man's 
weapons of defence ; whereas if the child be con- 
standy watched and kept out of liarm's way, he will 
come into the world a moral weakling. I was once 
present when an old mother, who had brought up 
a large family of children with eminent success, was 
asked by a young one what she would recommend 
in the case of some children who were too anxiously 
7 



98 CHILDREN. 

educated, and licr reply was — 'I think, my dear, a 
little wholesome neglect.' 

For shiiilar reasons it may be well that children 
should not be hedged in with any great number of 
rules and regulations. Such as are necessary to be 
established, tliey should be required imj)licitly to ob- 
serve. But there should be none that are superfluous. 
It is only in rich families, where there is a plentiful 
attendance of governesses and nurses, that many rules 
can be enforced ; and I believe that the constant 
attentions of governesses and nurses is one of the 
jrreatest moral disadvantages to which the children 
of the rich are exposed. 

I have heard a multiplicity of petty regulations 
defended, on the ground that it was a constant exer- 
cise of the child's sense of right and wrong. But 
will a child be really the better for always thinking 
about whether he does right or wrong, that is, — 
always thinking about himself? Were it not well 
that, for hours together, no question of right or wrong 
should arise in his path .'' or at least none that de- 
mands from him more than a half-mechanical atten- 
tion ? For the conscience of a child may easily be 
worn out, both by too much pressure and by over- 
stimulation. T have known a child to have a con- 
science of such extraordinary and premature sensi- 
bility, that at seven years of age she would be made 



CHILDREN. 99 

ill by remorse for a small fault. vShe was brought 
up by persons of excellent understanding, with infinite 
care and affection, and yet, by the time she was 
twenty years of age, she had next to no conscience 
and a hard heart. A person who had some experi- 
ence of precocious consciences once observed to me, 
in respect to those children who are said to be too 
good and too clever to live, that it was very desira- 
ble they should not. 

These views are not, of course, to be pushed too 
far. A child's conscience should always have that 
sufficiency of exercise which due discipline and the 
occasions of life will not fail to supply, without facti- 
tious duties or needless rules. And with respect to 
the treatment of the conscience on the point of sen- 
sibility, natural constitutions are so diverse that it is 
difficult to speak generally ; but though I would not 
have it much stimulated or unintermittingly worked 
upon — though I would avoid to intimidate or inten- 
erate the conscience — I do not agree with those 
who think that the appeals to it should be invariably 
made with a judicial calmness, and that all punish- 
ments should be inflicted dispassionately. Moral dis- 
approbation on the part of parents towards children 
(as indeed on the part of men towards men throughout 
all relations of life) should not operate mechanically, 
bringing with it, like a calculating machine, a pro- 



100 CHILDREN. 

portionate evil to be suffered as a consequence of 
every evil act. It should operate according to its 
own human nature, as a matter of emotion, not only 
bringing an evil to be suffered, but a moral sentiment 
to be recognised and taken to heart — a passion which 
should strike upon the moral sense. 

According to the nature of the child and of the 
fault, the emotion should be sometimes more of sorrow 
than of anger, sometimes more of anger than of sor- 
row. But it were better for the child's conscience 
that there should be some errors of emotion, than 
that punishments should be cold and dry. A parent 
should ' be angry and sin not ; ' that is, the anger 
should be a just and moral anger, and grave and 
governed ; but at the same time it should be the real 
anger of flesh and blood, and not the mere vis motrix 
of an instrument of discipline. In this way the moral 
sentiments of the parent, if they be virtuous, gener- 
ous, and just, will be imparted to the child : for it 
is a truth never to be lost sight of in the treatment 
of our children, that their characters are formed, not 
by what we do, think, or teach, but by what we feel 
and by what we are. 

With respect to the intellectual cultivation of chil- 
dren, it is very important that the body, mind, and 
moral sense of the child should proceed in their 
growth proportionately and pari passu: — - 



CHILDREN. 101 

' For nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
In thews and bulk ; but as tins temple waxes. 
The inward service of the mind and soul 
Grows wide withal.' * 

As this temple waxes let it be ; not before this 
temple waxes. Whichsoever of tiiese constituents of 
the human being, the body, the intellect, and the 
moral sense, shall shoot forth prematurely and in 
advance of the others, will run a great risk of being 
nipped and blighted. The intellectual is, of the three 
— in these times at least — that which is most liable 
to premature development. The evil consequences 
of such development have been very generally per- 
ceived, and many maxims are afloat against over- 
education ; but the ambition of parents is commonly 
too strong for their wisdom and prudence, and the 
over-education proceeds, the maxims notwithstanding. 
And schools and colleges and all tutors and teachers 
being governed by the same spirit, it is difficult for 
a wise parent to give effect to wise views, even when 
he heartily desires it. One rule, however, it is in his 
own hands to carry out, and this is, if he talk much 
to his children, not to talk intellectually. The intel- 
lectual talk of adults is apt, not only to stimulate 
the child's intellect to efforts beyond its strength, 
but also to o\ierlay many intellectual tastes which 

* Hamlet. 



102 CHILDREN. 

have their natural place in childhood, and which 
it is good for every mind to have passed through. It 
is best for a child that he should admire cordially 
what he does admire ; but if the intellectual tastes 
and criticisms of the adult mind are brought to bear 
upon him, he will try to admire what he cannot, and 
fail to admire what he might. 

On the other hand, I would* not be understood to 
recommend the sort of jocular nonsense which some 
intellectual parents will have recourse to in order to 
place their conversation on a level with a child's 
understanding; nor do I observe that children are 
fond of it, or at all flattered by it, but rather the 
contrary. For it is a mistake to suppose that any 
joke is good enough for a child. Intelligent children, 
if not absolutely fastidious as to jokes, (which cer- 
tainly all children are as to taste and manners,) will 
not, however, accept as complacently as might be 
wished, the mere good-natured disposition to make 
them merry; nor can they respond in the manner 
that is sometimes expected from them, to every well- 
meant effort of heavy gambolling and forced faceti- 
ousness. Whatever is most simple and natural is 
most pleasing to a child ; and if the parent be not 
naturally light and gay, he had better be grave with 
his children, only avoiding to be deep or subtle in 
discourse. 



CHILDREN. 



103 



But however parents may demean themselves, it is 
not desirable that they and their children should be 
always together. Children and young people — and 
I should say even adults — are not the better in their 
understandings for an exclusive association with their 
superiors in understanding. Such association should 
be occasional, not constant. The inferior mind so 
associated may possibly not be of a nature to be over- 
excited and over-wrought ; it may be safe from those 
evils through defect of spontaneous force and activity ; 
but in that case another evil arises ; it is led to adopt 
its opinions instead of thinking them, and finds a short 
cut to posts to which it would be better that it should 
fight its way. In the case of a young man who has 
been brought up in the constant society of a parent 
greatly superior to himself, it will generally be found 
that he has come by his opinions not (as is best in 
youth) partly through deference to authority, partly 
through conflict with evils, and partly by spontaneous 
impulse, but almost entirely by adoption, as if they 
were certified facts. And this leaves the mind unen- 
larged and the judgment unexercised. 

There is a class of opinions, however, — those con- 
nected with the moral and spiritual nature, — which 
are to be inculcated on a different principle from those 
which concern merely the cultivation of the intellect. 
For these are opinions which are not to be valued 



104 CHILDREN. 

merely as opinions, but on account of the feelings and 
affections which are to be incorporated with them. 
Great as is the importance of true religious doctrine — 
which is, as it were, the body of religion — it is, 
nevertheless, an importance subsidiary and derivative ; 
it is derived from the efficacy of true religious doctrine 
to cherish and protect the growth of genuine religious 
feeling, which is the soul of religion. The opinions 
are the organic structure ; the feelings are the vital 
principle. It is for the sake of the feelings that the 
organization is so important; and I think, therefore, 
that religious truths, or what the parent believes to be 
religious truths, should be presented to children through 
the conveyance of the feelings for implicit adoption, 
and not as matters to be wrought out in the under- 
standing. For the primary object, which is to fix the 
feeling, will be in some measure frustrated — the feel- 
ing will be in some measure abated or supplanted — if 
more thought be called up than the feeling of its own 
mere motion will naturally generate. 

But if the religious beliefs of a child be not founded 
in his reason, what, it may bo asked, will become of 
them when the credulous simplicity of childhood shall 
be at an end, and the thinking faculty shall have set 
itself to work? I answer, that whether his beliefs 
have been founded in reason, or whether they have 
been founded in love, receiving from reason merely a 



CHILDREN. 105 

collateral support, it is probable that if the child be 
of an active and inquisitive understanding, the beliefs 
will, at one period or another within childhood or 
succeeding it, sustain some shock and trial. But those 
who have taken much note of human nature will have 
observed, I think, that the reason is the weakest part 
of it, (God forbid that it should not!) and that the 
most reasonable opinions are seldom held with much 
tenacity, unless when they have been adopted in the 
same way as that in which prejudices are adopted; 
that is, when they have been borne in upon the under- 
standing by the feelings. Whilst I think, therefore, 
that love is that constituent of faith of which a child's 
nature is most capable, I also believe it to be that 
groundwork of faith on which all nature must rest, if 
it have any resting-place at all ; and love, therefore, 
inspiring the reason, but not reduced to the reason, 
must be so imparted to the child as to animate 
the growing and changing forms of doctrine through- 
out the several stages of childhood ; and when child- 
hood shall have been left behind, it is this, and 
nothing else, that can be relied upon to withstand 
the rashness of a youthful intellect, flushed by its first 
discoveries. The struggle will be great at this season, 
in proportion to the largeness of the nature and the 
force of the elements at work ; and if a strong under- 
standing should be too suddenly expanded, it is 



106 



CHILDREN. 



probable that there will be some disruption of the 
material fabric of doctrine in which the spiritual 
feeling has hitherto had its abode. But if the principle 
of love have been cherished and made strong from 
the first, the broken forms of doctrine will reunite, and 
love, with whatever strivings and wrestlings, will find 
an organic faith in which to set up its rest and secure 
itself from accidents of the intellect, as well as from 
whatsoever the world can do against it. And in most 
cases (though not in all unhappily) the faith will be 
the more strongly founded for the conflict in which 
it has been engaged. It was by Eros and Eris, by 
Love and Strife, that Order was brought out of 
Chaos. 

' I can just remember,' says a theologian of the last 
century, ' when the women first taught me to say my 
prayers, I used to have the idea of a venerable old 
man, of a composed benign countenance, with his own 
hair, clad in a morning gown of a grave-colored flower- 
ed damask, sitting in an elbow-chair.' * And he pro- 
ceeds to say, that in looking back to these beginnings, 
he is in no way disturbed at the grossness of his infaiiit 
theology. The image thus shaped by the imagination 
of the child was in truth merely one example of the 
various forms and conceptions, fitted to divers states 

* Lights of Nature and Gospel Blended, ch. iii., s. 1. 



CHILDREN. 107 

and seasons and orders and degrees of the religious 
mind, whether infant or adult, which represent the 
several approximations such minds, or minds at 
such seasons, can respectively make to the complete- 
ness of faith. These imperfect ideas should be held 
to be reconciled and comprehended in that complete- 
ness not rejected by it ; and the nearest approximation 
which the greatest of human minds can accomplish 
is surely to be regarded as much nearer to the 
imperfection of an infantine notion than to the fulness 
of truth. The gown of flowered damask and the 
elbow-chair may disappear ; the anthropomorphism of 
childhood may give place to the divine incarnation of 
the Second Person in after years ; and we may come 
to conceive of the Deijty as Milton did when his 
epithets were most abstract : 

' So spake the Sovran Presence.' 

But after all, these are but different grades of 
imperfection in the forms of doctrinal faith; and if 
there be a devouter love on the part of the child 
for what is pictured in his imagination as a vener- 
able old man, than in the philosophic poet for 
the ' Sovran Presence,' the child's faith has more 
of the efficacy of religious truth in it than the poet's 
and philosopher's. What we have to take care of 
in the religious training of a child is, that the love 



108 CHILDREN. 

shall bg indestructible and paramount ; so that in 
all the transmutations of doctrine which after years 
may bring, from the palpable picturings of Tucker's 
infant imagination to the 'Three Incomprehensibles ' 
of St. Athanasius, he may preserve the same relig- 
ious heart ; and whatever other knowledge or sup- 
posed knowledge shall supervene, may still ' know 
that there is nothing better than the fear of the 
Lord, and that there is nothing sweeter than to take 
heed unto the conuuandnu^nts of the Lord.'* 

* Ecclesiasticus, xxiii. 27. 



THE LIFE POETIC. 



Let it not be too contemplative for action, nor 
too active to afford room and space for contempla- 
tion. The tendency of our times is to bring every 
man of eminent abilities into great outward activity, 
and thereby perhaps in some cases to dam up and 
divert to the turning of this mill or that, the stream 
which should have flowed unbroken * in omne 
voluhilis cBvum,'' and made itself a mirror to nature. 
But it may happen to a man of genius, conscious of 
this tendency of the age, to throw himself too much' 
into the opposite extreme. His leanings should be 
towards retirement, no doubt; but he should indulge 
them, though largely, yet still with a measured free- 
dom, not a total abandonment. 

' Fountain-heads and pathless groves, 
Places which pale passion loves ' — * 

should be, without question, his favorite haunts : but 
• * Fletcher. 



110 THE LIFE POETIC. 

he is not to forget tliat i'ov the cultivation of the 
highest order of poetry, it is necessary that ho should 
be conversant witli life and nature at large, and 

' Know all qualities with a learned spirit 
Of human dealings ' — * 

that his poetry should spring out of his life, and that 
his life should abound in duties as well as in con- 
templations. 

For that poetic vision which is the vision of the 
introverted eye alone, has but a narrow scope : and 
observation comes of action, and most of that action 
which is the most responsible. And if it be true that 
* a man's mind is sometimes wont to tell him more 
than seven watchmen that sit above in an high tower,'! 
it is also true that that man will hear most of all, 
who hearkens to his own mind and to the seven watch- 
men besides ; whilst what he hears will turn to know- 
ledge, and will be fixed, amplified, and defined, in 
proportion as there are deeds and consequences to 
follow, and sweet or bitter fruits. He is but a child in 
knowledge, however versed in meditation, who has not 
to act, to suffer, and to teach, as well as to inquire and 
to learn. If a meditative man be used to be taken 
about a city in a carriage or led about it by a friend, 
it will be long before he knows his way in it ; but 

* Shakespeare. f Ecclesiaslicus, xxxvii. 14. 



THE LIFE POETIC. Ill 

not SO if he have to go about in it by himself, still 
less if he have to lead another. 

If, then, a poet would entitle himself to take the 
highest rank in his art, — to be numbered, that is, 
amongst the ' poets sage^^ he should be, to a moderate 
extent, mixed up with the affairs of life. His mind 
should be not a vessel only, but a vat. His wisdom 
should be a tried and stirring wisdom. His specula- 
tions should emanate from facts and events, and his 
poetry should have its roots in the common earth. 

But it is difficult to say how this conversancy with 
men and affairs is to be attempted in these times, 
without losing hold of the contemplative life altogether, 
and becoming involved in the inordinate activities of 
the age. If a profession be adopted, there is hardly 
any which leaves a moderate degree of leisure except 
to men of inferior abilities. Men of eminent abilities 
embarked in a profession, are placed under obligations 
of exertion which they cannot escape. In trade, 
strenuous efforts are enforced upon a man by the 
pressure of competition ; and trading occupations are 
perhaps in other respects unsuited to a poet. Political 
life is not open to him unless circumstances be favor- 
able ; and to a man who is alert and excitable, (as a 
poet must be supposed it to be,) it will prove too 
violent a diversion from poetic pursuits ; and this, not 
from tlic nature of the business only, but because it 



112 THE LIFE POETIC. 

commonly leads a man of quick sympathies (which 
again must be supposed in the poet's case) into a good 
deal of social dissipation. 
* If life,' says Cowley, 

' If life should a well-ordered poem be, 
(In which he only hits the white 
AVho joins true profit with the best delight,) 
The more heroic strain let others take, 
Mine the Pindaric way I '11 make. 

The matter shall be grave, the numbers loose and free.' 

This liberty of life cannot, I think, in these days — 
and in the case of a man of eminent abilities — be 
secured, if a man be confined to any of the establish- 
ed ruts in which life is made to run. 

If, then, neither professional, commercial, nor po- 
litical life will sort well with the life poetic, there 
remains little besides casual employments and the 
duties which accrue in every station, to supply a poet 
with the quota of action required for his purposes. 
These, however, may suffice if they be sedulously 
pursued. The poor are always with us, and their 
affairs fall fitly into the hands of educated men 
who have no professional avocations. Let the poet 
be a man of fortune, and the duties of a landlord 
are incumbent upon him, whilst those of a magis- 
trate lie before him, with the whole field' of county 



THE LIFE POETIC. 113 

business. If he be not a proprietor, yet one place 
he must occupy — that of a parishioner, with parochial 
functions ; and the vestry will present, to an observant 
eye, as instructive an exponent of human nature, 
with pretty nearly the same variety of features, as 
the Lords spiritual and temporal with Her Majesty's 
faithful Commons in Parliament assembled. Nor is 
the business of a parish to be regarded as unworthy 
the diligent attention of a man of genius. It is not 
impossible that, from time to time, it may require 
the same species of ability as the business of an 
empire, and exercise the same faculties in its adjust- 
ment ; for the amount of prudence and sagacity 
needful for the successful transaction of business 
depends comparatively little on the scale of operation. 
Sometimes, indeed, the larger the scale the easier the 
task. 

Furthermore, a man of judgment and ability will 
find, as he advances in life, that the duties of 
friendship and relationship will multiply upon him 
more than upon men of inferior capacity, if only he 
be found willing to discharge them. And if he shall 
attain to eminence as a poet, that, like every other 
species of eminence, will bring with it no inconsider- 
able demands upon his activity. To these may be 
added — if they should fall in his way — casual and 
temporary employments in the public service, taking 
8 



114 THE LIFE POETIC. 

care, however, not to let that service fix itself upon 
him and suck the blood out of his poetic veins. Milton 
had employments of this nature ; and before he should 
hold himself equipped for his great enterprise in 
poetry, he deemed it indispensable that to ' industrious 
and select reading' should be added ' steady observa- 
tion' and 'insight into all seemly and generous arts 
and affairs.' * Spenser and Cowley had such employ- 
ments also; and many others might be named, were 
they worthy to be named after these. 

But if a poet shall fail to find any field for external 
activity, which would admit also of leisure and retire- 
ment, or if he shall have an invincible repugnance 
to an outward life, (which may not unnaturally be 
his predicament,) then it behoves him the more to 
place his life under a well-devised discipline, in order 
that it may be, if not externally active, yet orderly 
and sedulous. For by how much a man shall reserve 
himself to a contemplative life, by so much will he 
need a more constant and watchful self-regulation in 
the conduct of it; and by so much, also, will the 
task of self-regulation be difficult and severe. The 
regimen of external circumstan/se and of obligations 
contracted to others, is an aid which only a strong 
man can dispense with in the ordering of his days 

* Reason of Church Government, Book 2d. 



THE LIFE rOETIC. 115 

and hours ; and moreover, if the course of the hours 
is to be governed wholly from within and pro re 
natd as it were, there will be some danger of self- 
government being accompanied by too much of self- 
occupation. 

Nor is it to be forgotten that the man who lies 
under no external obligation, (none that is apparent 
and palpable,) to occupy himself in one way or 
another, will become a prey to many demands for 
small services, attentions, and civilities, such as will 
neither exercise his faculties, add to his knowledge, 
nor leave him to his thoughts. The prosecution of a 
contemplative life is not an answer to any of these 
demands ; for though the man who is in the pursuit 
of an active calling, is not expected to give up his 
guineas for the sake of affording some trifling grati- 
fication to some friend or acquaintance or stranger, 
yet the man who has renounced the active calling 
and the guineas in order that he may possess his 
soul in peace, is constantly expected to give up his 
meditations, and no one counts it for a sacrifice. 
Meditation, it is thought, can always be done some 
other day. A man without something indispensable 
to do, will find his life to be involved in some of the 
difficulties by which a woman's life is often beset, 
one of which difficulties is the want of a claim para- 
mount upon her time. And these difficulties will not 



116 THE LIFE POETIC. 

be the less if the poet have, as he ought to have, 
something of the woman in his nature ; as he ought 
to have, I aver ; because the poet should be hie et 
hcsc homo — the representative of human nature at 
large and not of one sex only. With the difficulties 
of a woman's life, the poet will not find that any of 
its corresponding facilities accrue ; he will find claims 
to be made upon him as upon a man, and no in- 
demnities granted to him as a poet. Thus it is that 
in the bustling crowds of this present world, a medi- 
tative man finds himself, however passively disposed, 
in a position of oppugnancy to those around him, 
and must struggle in order to stand still. 

But even if a poet devoted wholly to retirement, 
should be able to seclude himself from petty and 
unprofitable interruptions, he would still be the better 
for methodizing his life by some severity of self- 
restraint. Meditation is a wild business when there 
is nothing else to be done. An excitable mind will 
wander and waste itself if it be unenclosed ; and 
nothing needs to be intermitted more than the exer- 
cise of the imaginative faculties. I have heard a 
man of ardent religious feelings declare, that his 
devotions were more lively and spiritual after a day 
of business than in a day consecrated to devotional 
exercises; and in like manner it may happen with 
a poet, that there shall be more freshness and vigor 



THE LIFE POETIC. 117 

in the contemplations which spring up after compres- 
sion, than in those which are the predetermined occu- 
pation of the day. 

Next to conversancy with life and affairs, a poet 
should cultivate a conversancy with external nature. 
The cultivation, indeed, will come of itself, if his 
life be led where nature is favorably presented to 
him; and not where it is soiled and obscured, as in 
the smoky parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire, or 
built out, as in great cities. If, however, circum- 
stances should oblige him to live in a city, occasional 
visits to the country may still do much for him — in 
some cases, perhaps, even as much as constant resi- 
dence. The loss of continual intercourse with Nature 
is, no doubt, a great loss to those who have an ever- 
flowing love and a never-failing admiration of her; 
which are, indeed, supreme amongst poetical gifts : 
but on the other hand, if there be some short-comings 
in this kind, the benefits of continual residence will 
bear a less proportion to those of occasional inter- 
course. What we see rarely is seen with an access 
of enjoyment which quickens observation and bright- 
ens recollection ; and if the susceptibilities need to 
be stimulated, the stimulation will redound more from 
what is fresh than from what is familiar. 

Mr. Tennyson has described — as he only could — 
a sort of semi-seclusion, which would seem to com- 



118 THE LIFE POETIC. 

bine all that a poet could want to favor his intercourse 
with Nature and with his kind : 

* Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite 
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love : 
Kews from the humming city comes to it 
In sound of funeral or marriage bells ; 
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear 
The windy clanging of the minster clock ; 
Although between it and the garden lies 
A league of grass, washed by a slow, broad stream, 
That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar, 
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on. 
Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge. 
Crowned with the minster-towers.' * 

It must be acknowledged, however, that the greatest 
English Poets of past times did undoubtedly live 
much in London ; and of those, he who excelled 
most in the treatment of external nature, composed 
his best descriptions from the images retained in his 
imagination, when the knowledge of nature was at 
one entrance quite shut out. 

In our own times the greatest poets have lived in 
the country ; but indeed they had good reasons for 
doing so, independently of intercouse with nature. 
For ^ the social life of cities is much changed from 
what it was two hundred years ago. In London, in 

* The Gardener's Daughter. 



THE LIFE POETIC. 119 

the present times, an eminent man is beset with a 
multiplicity of social enjoyments and excitements, 
the very waste-pipes of genial sensibility ; and the 
poet's imagination, instead of forming a fund to be 
continually deepened and widened by influx from 
secret sources, is diffused and spread abroad and 
speedily dried up. Such, at least, is the case with 
those eminent men who are lively in discourse or 
cordial and courteous in demeanor. Others, perhaps, 
invested with an adequate unpopularity, may be in 
little danger. * Me, though blind,' says a poet who 
seems not to have perceived the perils of social 
popularity till they had passed by him, — 

'Me, though blind, 
God's mercy spared, from social snares with ease 
Saved by that gracious gift, inaptitude to please.' 

But social repulsiveness has its evils too, when fully 
brought out in a metropolitan life : the garb of hedge- 
hog skins, though a coat of proof, may be turned 
outside in, and not worn with the equanimity with 
which that sort of garment is said to have been worn 
by the Saint. Whether, therefore, the poet be so- 
cially unacceptable, or be courted, flattered, and 
caressed, but most in the latter case, London, in 
these times, is not the place in which his faculties 
will be most favorably developed. 



120 THE LIFE POETIC. 

And a due appreciation of the tennptations to which 
a poet is exposed by popular admiration and the 
courtings and wooings of social life, may lead us to 
juster views than are, I think, generally entertained of 
the ways in which genius and art are to be cher- 
ished by nations and governments. There is much 
complaint made by the admirers of arts and litera- 
ture, that their professors are not sufficiently advanced 
and honored by the State and by mankind. In 
my estimation they are honored more than is good 
either for themselves or for their calling. Good for 
mankind it may be to admire whatever is admirable in 
genius or art; but as to the poet himself, a very 
moderate extent of favorable acceptance in his own 
times is all that can be beneficial to him either as a 
man or as an artist. He is by temperament but too 
excitable ; with him the vita timhralilis is essential to 
repose and self-possession ; and it is from repose and 
self-possession, — 

' Deep self-possession, an intense repose — ' * 

that all genuine emanations of poetic genius proceed. 
To the poet, solitude itself is an excitement, into 
which none that is adventitious should intrude : the 
voices which come to him in solitude should not be 
mixed with acclamations from without ; and the voices 

• Coleridge. 



THE LIFE POETIC. 121 

which proceed from him should not be confounded by 
the amiable intrusion of their own echoes, apt, when 
quickly reverberated, to be too intently listened for. 

It is true that he must have some more or less 
conscious anticipation of sympathy to come; he must 
feel that his voice will not be as the voice of one 
crying in the desert, but that his just thoughts, his 
glorious visions, his passions and * the high reason of 
his fancies,' will in their due time of maturity, and 
after so many revolutions of the seasons as are need- 
ful for the ripening of such results, reach the hearts of 
multitudes, and find an echo in the ages that are 
unborn. But these anticipations of what is distant are 
not of a nature to agitate or disturb the mind in its 
self-communion. They serve to animate his lighter 
efforts, and they support him in his severer labors and 
more strenuous studies ; but they do not dissipate or 
distract the mind. It is far otherwise in respect to 
contemporaneous and immediate admiration; and I 
doubt whether any high endeavor of poetic art ever 
has been or ever will be promoted by the stimulation of 
popular applause. 

Still less would poetic art be advanced by rewards 
in the shape of civil honors and distinctions ; and the 
proposals which have been made for so rewarding it 
betray, when they are examined, the inconsistency of 
the views on which they are founded. It v/ould prob- 



122 THE LIFE POETIC. 

ably be admitted by their authors that poetic art 
should not be accounted in any respect inferior to 
military or political art. Yet has any one entertained 
the notion of assigning to the greatest poet of an age, 
civil honors and distinctions tantamount to those which 
are assigned to the greatest soldier or politician ? The 
creation of a Duke of Rydal, with an appanage of 
.£10,000 a year, is not the sort of measure which has 
been suggested, and probably there is no one who 
would not acknowledge it to be absurd. Yet it could 
be hardly more absurd than the assignment to our 
greatest poets, of titular distinctions, which, being the 
highest that are proposed as a reward of poetic genius, 
are yet amongst the lowest that would be considered 
worthy the acceptance of a meritorious general officer 
or a serviceable county member. The truth is, that 
civil honors and titular distinctions are altogether unfit 
for great poets ; who, being but two or three in a cen- 
tury, are to be distinguished by the rarity of their kind. 
With regard to pensions, were they intended merely 
as honorary rewards, they would be open to the same 
objections. If they were supposed to have reference to 
the dignity of the calling, such pensions as are given to 
Lord Chancellors and Ambassadors should pitch the 
scaljC, rather than such as are given to Clerks and 
Collectors of Customs. But they are assigned upon 
different principles, and their sufficiency is to be 



THE LIFE POETIC. 123 

brought to another test. In treating of the life which 
a poet ought to lead, I have left out of the account 
one material question, — whether it be such a life as 
it is likely that he will be able to lead. And as there 
is no reason to suppose him one of the few who are 
born to a competency, the renunciation which I have 
recommended of all professional and commercial pur- 
suits, and also of all public employments except such 
as are casual and temporary, may well suggest the 
inquiry in what manner he is to be maintained. Not, 
certainly, on the profits of poetry ; for unless he apply 
himself merely to please and pamper and not to ele- 
vate or instruct, his poetry will do little indeed towards 
procuring him a subsistence : it will probably not even 
yield him such a return as would suffice to support a 
laboring man for one month out of the twelve. This 
has been the case with the greatest poets, if not during 
the whole, at least during the greater part of their 
lives ; and even when their poetry has attained to 
what may be called popularity, it is still a popularity 
which extends only to the cultivated, as distinguished 
from the merely educated classes, and does not bring 
with it any very profitable sale. 

If poetry, then, be unavailable, will the poet be 
enabled to subsist by the aid of prose ? This will 
probably be his best resource ; but even prose will fail 
to return a profit, unless it be written for- the market. 



124 THE LIFE POETIC. 

Having been almost the only resource of one who was 
at once an eminent poet, and in general literature 
the most distinguished writer of his age, Mr. Southey, 
his example may be fairly adduced as showing what 
can be made of it under the most favorable circum- 
stances. By a small pension and the office of 
laureate, (yielding together about .£200 per annum,) 
he was enabled to insure his life, so as to make a 
moderate posthumous provision for his family ; and 
it remained for him to support himself and them, 
so long as he should live, by his writings. With 
unrivalled industiy, infinite stores of knowledge, ex- 
traordinary talents, a delightful style, and the devotion 
of about one half of his time to writing what should 
be marketable rather than what he would have desired 
to write, he defrayed the cost of that frugal and 
homely way of life which he deemed to be the hap- 
piest and the best. So far it may be said that all 
was well ; and certainly never was man more con- 
tented with a humble lot than he. But at sixty years 
of age he had never yet had one year's income in 
advance; and when between s\xty and seventy his 
powers of writing failed, had it not been for the 
timely grant of an additional pension,* his means 
of subsistence would have failed too. It was owing 

* Through the care of Sir R. Peel. 



THE LIFE POETIC. 125 

to this grant alone, that the last years of a life of 
such literary industry as was the wonder of his time, 
were not harassed by pecuniary difficulties; and at 
his death the melancholy spectacle was presented, of 
enormous preparations thrown away, one great labor 
of his life half finished, and other lofty designs which 
had been cherished in his heart of hearts from youth 
to age, either merely inchoate or altogether unat- 
tempted. 

We mourn over the lost books of Tacitus and 
Pliny, and rake in the ruins of Herculaneum to 
recover them; but .£300 a-year — had it been given 
in time — might have realized for us works, over 
the loss of which our posterity may perhaps mourn 
as much or more ! 

* Things incomplete, and purposes betrayed, 
Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass, 
Than noblest objects utterly decayed.' * 

If one moiety of Mr. Southey's timet — applied 
to procure, by marketable literature, the means of 

* Wordsworth. 

t I will allow myself to note here, whether or not it be 
to the purpose, that the only son of the author of the Book 
of the Church — a most active and exemplary clergyman 
with a large family — is left (unavoidably perhaps, but the 
well-wishers of the Church must surely wish that it could 



126 THE LIFE POETIC. 

subsistence — is found to leave such miserable results 
as these, it may easily be imagined what fortune 
would attend the cfTorts in marketable prose, (always 
assuming them, of course, to be good and worthy, 
and not the mere suppliance of the literary toyshop,) 
of a man of like poetical gifts, but not endowed with 
the same grace and facility in composition, the same 
unwearied industry and almost unexampled produc- 
tiveness. 

Pensions to poets, then, in such cases — and, in- 
deed, pensions to all writers, poetical or other, in the 
higher and graver and therefore less popular and 
lucrative walks of literature — may be deemed, I 
think, tliough not appropriate as honors or rewards, 
yet desirable as providing a subsistence which may 
not be attainable in other ways without great injury 
to the interests of literature. The provision should 
be suited to the retired and homely way of life, by 
which the true dignity of a poet will be best sus- 
tained, and in which his genius will have its least 
obstructed development; but it should be a provision 
calculated — if prudently managed — to make his life, 
in its pecuniary elements, easy and untroubled. I 

be avoided) to struggle with the world, on a hard-working 
poverty-stricken curacy. This he does, however, in a spirit 
of manly contentedness worthy of his father. 



THE LIFE POETIC. 127 

say ' if prudently managed,' because as to the wants 
of a spendthrift poet, or of one who is incompetent 
to the management of his affairs, they are wants 
which it is hard to measure and impossible to supply. 
If the pensions now given to men of letters, to scien- 
tific men, and to artists, be of such amount as would 
enable them, living frugally, to give all or most of 
their time, with an easy mind, to those arts and pur- 
suits by which they may best consult the great and 
perdurable interests committed by Providence to their 
charge, then the amount is sufficient, though it be 
but little ; and the fact which is so often brought 
forward, that it is less than the ordinary emoluments 
of trades, professions, or the humbler walks of the 
public service, is not material to the case. If the 
pensions, on the other hand, be of less amount than 
will effect this purpose, then I think that the just 
ground on which the grant of such pensions is to be 
rested, — that is, the true interests of men of genius 
themselves, and, through them, the interests of litera- 
ture and art, — require that they should be advanced 
in amount so far as may be sufficient for this purpose, 
and no farther. 

It is not only to secure to him the undisturbed 
possession of his time, and the undiverted direction 
of his endeavors, that it is expedient to make some 
sufficient pecuniary provision for a poet : such a pro- 



128 THE LIFE POETIC. 

vision is important also as a safeguard to his character 
and conduct ; for few indeed are the men whose 
character and conduct are unimpaired by pecuniary 
difficulties ; and though wise men will hardly be 
involved in such difficulties, let their need be what 
it may, and though none but a wise man can be a 
great poet, yet the wisdom of the wisest may be weak 
in action ; it may be infirm of purpose ; through 
emotions or abstractions it may be accessible to one 
inroad or another ; and though I am far from claim- 
ing any peculiar indulgence for the infirmities of men 
of genius — on the contrary, in my mind, nothing 
can be more erroneous than to extend indulgence to 
moral aberrations precisely in those cases in which, 
operating to the corruption of the greatest gifts, they 
are the most malign and pernicious, — yet, for this 
very reason, whilst refusing them any indult or abso- 
lution, I would claim for men of genius all needful 
protection — more perhaps than ought to be needful — 
in order that no danger that can be avoided may 
attend the great national and universal interests in- 
volved in their life and character. For never let this 
truth depart from the minds of poets, or of those 
who would cherish and protect them — that the poet 
and the man are one and indivisible; that as the life 
and character is, so is the poetry; that the poetry 
is the fruit of the whole moral, spiritual, intellectual, 



THE LIFE POETIC. 129 

and practical being; and howsoever in the imperfec- 
tion of humanity, fulfilments may have fallen short 
of aspirations, and the lives of some illustrious poets 
may have seemed to be at odds with greatness and 
purity, yet in so far as the life has faltered in wisdom 
and virtue, failing thereby to be the nurse of high 
and .pare imaginations, the poet, we may be sure, has 
been shorn of his beams; and whatsoever splendor 
may remain to him, even though to our otherwise 
bedarkened eyes wandering in a terrestrial dimness, 
it may seem to be consummate and the very ' off- 
spring of Heaven first-born,' yet it is a reduced 
splendor and a merely abortive offspring as compared 
with what it might have been, and with what it is in 
the bounty of God to create, by the conjunction of 
the like gifts of high reason, ardent imagination, 
efflorescence of fancy and intrepidity of impulse, 
with a heart subdued to Him and a pure and un- 
spotted life. Out of the heart are the issues of life, 
and out of the life are the issues of poetry. 

And the greatest of those poets whose lives, though 
perhaps less blemished in reality than evil report 
would have them to be, are certainly not free from 
reproach, have seen and acknowledged all this, and 
have known what they have lost. If the little that 
has come down to us concerning Shakspeare includes 
somewhat against him, we know also from himself 
9 



130 THE LIFE POETIC. 

how it was by himself regarded ; and what is to the 
present purpose, we know that he imputed the evil 
courses into which he was betrayed to the way of 
life, forced upon him by the want of a compe- 
tency : — 

\ 
* Oh, for my sake do thou with Fortune chide, 
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 

Than public means which public manners breeds. 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 

And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To that it works in, like the dyer's hand.' * 

And we know further, that when he had attained 
to a competency, (would that it had been earlier !) 
he followed that way of life no longer. 

We have now plotted out for the poet a life, con- 
templative but not inactive, orderly, dutiful, observant, 
conversant with human affairs and with nature; and 
though homely and retired, yet easy as regards pecu- 
niary circumstances. But some particulars remain 
to be added. As his life of contemplation is to be 
varied by practical activity upon occasion, so should 
his solitude be varied by occasional companionship. 
In youth his companions will probably be chosen very 

• 111th Sonnet. 



THE LIFE POETIC. 131 

much for the sake of their intellectual powers and 
acquirements ; and whilst we are young we are most 
open to cultivation from such companionship. After- 
wards, truth and kindness come to be, if not all in 
all, yet at least of all qualities the most essential ; 
and to one who, learning from books what books 
can teach, would desire to make more direct inquisi- 
tion into the secrets of human nature, it is far less 
important that companionship should be intellectual, 
than that it should be confidential. The poet being 
himself frank and unreserved, (as I think poets for 
the most part will be found to be,) should beget 
frankness and unreserve on the part of his compan- 
ions, who should come/ to him for advice and sym- 
pathy in all the emergencies of life. 'I have got 
into this or that dilemma or difficulty, what am I to 
do ? ' 'I have fallen in love with this or that young 
lady, what will become of me .? ' 'I have been ill- 
used and betrayed, shall I forgive it, or shall I resent 
it.?' The poet's companions, making hasty resort to 
him under such circumstances, the inmost thoughts 
of their hearts disclosed by the passion of the time, 
whilst a friendly or perhaps even an impassioned 
interest is excited in the heart of the poet, the result 
will be a living knowledge, and a judgment, by as 
much as it is responsibly and affectionately exercised, 
by so much the more deeply cultivated. This is the 



132 THE LIFE POETIC. 

companionship which, being indeed essential to any 
one who would bring out his better nature and fulfil 
his duties as a man, is eminently essential to a 
poet. 

There is another companionship to be considered, — 
that of books. The reading by which Milton proposed 
to prepare himself to write poetry was, as appears 
by a passage to which I have already referred, ' select 
reading.' In these times I think that a poet should 
feed chiefly (not of course exclusively) on the litera- 
ture of the seventeenth century. The diction and 
the movement of that literature, both in verse and 
in what Dryden calls 'that other harmony,' are, in 
my apprehension, far more fitted than the literature 
which has followed it, to be used for the training of 
the mind to poetry. There was no writing public 
nor reading populace in that age. The age was the 
worse for that, but the written style of the age was 
the better. The writers were few and intellectual; 
and they addressed themselves to learned, or, at least, 
to studious and diligent readers. The structure of 
their language is in itself an evidence that they count- 
ed upon another frame of mind and a different pace 
and speed in reading, from that which can alone be 
looked to by the writers of these days. Their books 
were not written to be snatched up, run through, 
talked over, and forgotten; and their diction, there- 



THE LIFE POETIC. 133 

fore, was not such as lent wings to haste and impa- 
tience, making everything so clear that he who ran 
or flew might read. Rather it was so constructed 
as to detain the reader over what was pregnant and 
profound, and compel him to that brooding and pro- 
lific posture of the mind, by which, if he had wings, 
they might help him to some more genial and profit- 
able employment than that of running like an ostrich 
through a desert. And hence those characteristics of 
diction by which these writers are made more fit 
than those who have followed them, to train the ear 
and utterance of a poet. For if we look at the 
long-suspended sentences of those days, with all their 
convolutions and intertextures — the many parts wait- " 
ing for the ultimate wholeness — we shall perceive 
that without distinctive movement and rhythmical sig- 
nificance of a very high order, it would be impossible 
that they could be sustained in any sort of clearness. 
One of these writer's sentences is often in itself a 
work of art, having its strophes and antistrophes, its 
winding changes and recalls, by which the reader, 
though conscious of plural voices and running di- 
visions of thought, is not however permitted to disso- 
ciate them from their mutual concert and dependency, 
but required, on the contrary, to give them entrance 
into his mind, opening it wide enough for the purpose, 
as one compacted and harmonious fabric. Sentences 



134 THE LIFE rOETIC. 

thus elaborately constructed, and complex though mu- 
sical, are not easy to a remiss reader, but they are 
clear and delightful to an intent reader. Sentences, 
on the other hand, such as are demanded in these 
times by the reading commonalty, and written by 
those who aspire to be their representatives in the 
republic of letters, lie under little obligation to address 
themselves to the ear of the mind. Sense is to be 
taken in by so little at a time, that it matters not 
greatly what sound goes with it ; or, at all events, 
one movement and one tune, which all the world 
understands, is as much as our sentence can make 
room for or our reader will take time for; and as 
matter and style will ever re-act upon each other, 
I fear there is a tendency in our popular writers to 
stop short of that sort of matter to which brief bright 
sentences are not appropriate and all-sufficient. How- 
ever this be, the finer melodies of language will 
always be found in those compositions which deal 
with many considerations at once — some principal, 
some subordinate, some exceptional, some gradational, 
some oppugnant ; and deal with them compositely, 
by blending whilst they distinguish. And so much 
am I persuaded of the connection between true intel- 
lectual harmony of language and this kind of com- 
position, that I would rather seek for it in an Act of 
Parliament — if any arduous matter of legislation be 



THE LIFE POETIC. 135 

in band-— than in the productions of our popular 
writers, however lively and forcible. An Act of Par- 
liament, in such subject-matter, is studiously written 
and expects to be diligently read, and it generally 
comprises compositions of the multiplex character 
which has been described. It is a kind of writing, 
therefore, to which some species of rhythmical move- 
ment is indispensable, as any one will find who 
attempts to draft a difficult and comprehensive enact- 
ment, with the omission of all the words which speak 
to the ear only, and are superfluous to 'the sense. 

Let me not be misunderstood as presuming to find 
fault generally and indiscriminately with our modern 
manner of writing. It may be adapted to its age and 
its purposes ; which purposes, as bearing directly upon 
living multitudes, have a vastness and momentousness 
of their own. All that it concerns me to aver is, that 
the purpose which it will not answer is that of training 
the ear of a poet to rhythmical melodies. And how 
little it lends itself to any high order of poetical pur- 
poses, may be judged by the dreary results of every 
attempt which is made to apply it to purposes of a 
cognate character — to prayers, for example, and 
spiritual exercises. Compare our modern compositions 
of this kind with the language of the liturgy — a lan- 
guage which, though for the most part short and ejac- 
ulate ry and not demanding to be rhythmic in order to 



136 THE LIFE POETIC. 

be understood, partakes, nevertheless, in the highest 
degree, of the musical expressiveness which pervaded 
tlie compositions of the time. Listen to it in all its 
varieties of strain and cadence, sudden or sustained, — 
now holding on in assured strength, now sinking in a 
soft contrition, and anon soaring in the joyfulness of 
faith, — confession, absolution, exultation, each to its 
appropriate music, and these again contrasted with the 
steady statements of the doxologies ; — let us listen, I 
say, to this language, which is one effusion of celestial 
harmonies, and compare with it the flat and uninspired 
tones and flagging movements of those compounds of 
petition and exhortation, (from their length and multi- 
fai'iousness peculiarly demanding rhythmic su])port,) 
which are to be found in modern collections of prayers 
for the use of families. I think the comparison will 
constrain us to acknowledge that short sentences in 
long succession, however clear in construction and 
correct in grammar, if they have no rhythmic im- 
pulse — though they may veiy well deliver themselves 
of what the writer thinks and means — will fail to 
bear in upon the mind any adequate impression of 
what he feels — his hopes and fears, his joy, his 
gratitude, his compunction, his anguish and tribula- 
tion ; or, indeed, any assurance that he had not 
merely framed a document of piety, in which he 
had carefully set down whatever was most proper to 



THE LIFE POETIC. 137 

be said on the mornings and evenings of each day. 
These compositions have been, by an illustrious sol- 
dier, designated ' fancy prayers,' and this epithet may 
be suitable to them in so far as they make no account 
of authority and prescri})tion ; but neither to the fancy 
nor to the imagination do they appeal through any 
utterance which can charm the ear. 

I come back, then, to the position that a poet 
should make companions chiefly of those writers who 
have written in the confidence that their books would 
be learned and inwardly digested, and whose language 
was framed for patient and erudite ears, and an atti- 
tude of the mind like that in which St. Paul listened 
to Gamaliel, sitting at his feet. And I think that 
he should rather avoid any habitual resort to books, 
however delightful in their kind, such as are written 
in these times and for these times, to catch the 
fugacious or stimulate the sluggish reader ; books 
such as may be read in the captiousness of haste 
by a lawyer with an appointment to keep and a 
watch on the table, or in an inapprehensive weari- 
ness by a country gentleman after a day of field 
sports. 

Moreover, by this abstinence, and by a conversancy 
with elder models in the matter of diction, the poet 
will be enabled to employ as his own, by the habit 
which is a second nature, that slightly archaistic 



138 THE LIFE POETIC. 

coloring of language, which, being removed from 
what is colloquial and familiar, at the same time that 
it has no incongruity or unnatural strangeness, is, I 
think, in these times at least, (as by Spenser and 
others it was deemed to be formerly also,) the best 
costume in which poetry can be 'clothed, combining 
what is common to other ages with what is charac- 
teristic of its own. At the same time the true poet 
will be choice and chary, as well as moderate, in 
the use of archaisms ; by no means detaining or 
reviving old forms of speech, which, being intrinsi- 
cally bad, are in a way to be worthily forgotten. The 
wells of English were not altogether undefiled in 
any age ; and they who aspire to be what poets ought 
to be, the conservators of language, will proceed, not 
by obstructing the expurgation of their mother tongue, 
— a process which, as well as its corruption, is con- 
tinually on foot, — but by remanding to their more 
derivative significations, words which are beginning 
to go astray, and by observing with a keener insight 
the latent metaphorical fitness or unfitness by which 
all language is pervaded. 

Nor is it to be supposed that the true poet will 
betray his trust in the conservation of his country's 
tongue, through any latitude popularly permitted to 
him for convenience of rhyme or rhythm. For what- 
ever may be meant by those who speak of poetical 



THE LIFE POETIC. 139 

license, that phrase would mislead us much, were we 
to suppose that the language of poetry is not required 
to be precise for the most part, and beyond all other 
language apt and discriminative. And though this 
peculiar aptitude will escape many of the poet's 
readers, (if he have many,) and much of it will not 
be recognised at once even by the more skilful few, 
yet in this, as in other matters of art, it is what can 
be fully appreciated only by continual study, that 
will lay the strongest foundations of fame. The 
' hsec placuit semel ' should be, to the poet, of infi- 
nitely less account than the ' hccc decies repetita 
placebit : ' nor is he worthy of the name of a poet 
who would not rather be read a hundred times by 
one reader than once by a hundred. ( 

When that great man of whom I have already 
made mention, speaks of his life as led in his library 
and with his books, those to which he adverts as his 
never-failing friends, are the books of other times; 
and a poet's feelings as to this companionship, could 
not be more expressively conveyed than in the verses 
in which he has given them utterance ; -— 

' My days among the dead are past, 
Around me I behold 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 
The mighty minds of old : 



140 THE LIFE POETIC. 

My never-failing friends are they, 
"With whom I converse day by day. 

' With them I take delight in weal, 

And seek relief in woe ; 
And while I understand and feel 

How much to them I owe, 
My cheeks have often been bedewed 
With tears of thoughtful gratitude. 

' My thoughts are with the dead ; with them 

I live in long past years ; 
Their virtues love, their faults condemn. 

Partake their hopes and fears : 
And from their lessons, seek and find 
Instruction with an humble mind. 

' My hopes are with the dead. Anon 

My place with them will be ; 
And I with them shall travel on 

Through all eternity j 
Yet leaving here a name, I trust, 
That will not perish in the dust.' 

With regard to the habitual reading of books in 
foreign languages, whether living languages or other, 
I, being but veiy imperfectly acquainted with any 
but my own, am not competent to say what would 
be the effect of it upon a poet's diction and numbers ; 
but this subject is one which would deserve to be 



THE LIFE POETIC, 141 

investigated by some duly qualified critic* Milton, 
I think, though he greatly enriched his store of poeti- 
cal images and materials by his conversancy with 
Latin, Greek, and Italian books, did yet suffer injury 
on the other hand in the perverting of his diction 
to the Latin ; his numbers, however, (for numbers 
are less than diction accessible to foreign influence,) 
remaining unwarped and eminently his countiy's and 
his own. Dante had no indigenous literature to assist 
him in the moulding of his verse, being himself the 
founder of the Italian as a literate language ; and he 
rebukes with some severity of disdain, those who 
were 'tarn obscense rationis,' as to magnify the lan- 
guage of their native country above eveiy other. 

* Since the first and second editions of this book were 
published, I have been informed by Mr. Crabbe Robinson, 
the friend of Schiller and of most of the other great men of 
letters of his times in England and Germany, — indeed I 
may add, the friend of all men, great and small, who stand 
in need of his friendship, — that being one day with Schiller 
in his library, and observing on the shelves a collection of 
German translations of Shakspeare, he inquired how it was 
that Schiller, who understood English, could require these 
translations. Schiller's answer was, that he was in the 
habit of reading as little as possible in foreign languages, 
because it was his business to write German, and he thought 
that by reading in other languages he should lose his nicer 
perceptions of what belonged to his own. 



142 THE LIFE POETIC. 

' For myself,' he s;iys, ' whose country is the world, 
being native to that as the fish to the sea, though I 
drank the waters of the Arno before I liad a tooth 
in my head, and have so loved Florence as, by 
reason of my love, to undergo an unjust banishment, 
yet have I holden my judgment subject to my reason 
rather than to my senses ; and as to Florence whence 
I am sprung, regard it though I may as the place in 
the world most pleasant to me, yet when I revolve 
the works of the poets and other writers by whom 
the world has been described in all its particulars 
from pole to pole, I am strong and absolute in the 
opinion, derived from other evidence than that of 
the senses, that there are regions and cities more 
delightful and noble than those of Tuscany, and 
languages better both for their use and their charm 
than the Latian.'* 



* ' Nam quicunque tam obscense rationis est ut locum suae 
nationis deliciosissimum credat esse sub sole, huic etiam praB 
cunctis proprium vulgare Ik-ebit, id est maternam locutionem, 
prseponere : . . . . Nos autem, cui mundus est patria velut 
piscibus aiquor, quamquam Sarnum biberimus ante dentes, 
et Florentiam adeo diligamus ut, quia dileximus, exiliura 
patiamur injusle, ratione magis quam sensu spatulas nostri 
judicii podiamus : et quamvis ad voluptatem nostram, sive 
nostras sensualitatis quietem, in terris amocnior locus quam 
Fiorentia non existat, revolventes et poetarum, et aliorum 



THE LIFE POETIC. 143 

It would be matter of much interest to know from 
competent critics, how far the operation of these 
sentiments is to be traced in the fabric of Dante's 
verse, he having had, as it were, to build it up from 
the ground ; or how far the native genius of the 
language has ruled supreme. If Milton, however, 
have accepted foreign aid, and perhaps Dante also, 
yet Shakspeare is a signal example of the all-suffi- 
ciency of national resources ; having, with his ' small 
Latin and less Greek,' so large and various a vocabu- 
lary, it hardly seems possible that any extent of 
erudition could have bettered it, and a structure of 
language so flexible and multiform, that it Could not 
have been more so had there been a confluence of 
twenty tributary tongues at its formation. 

Having considered, if not sufficiently, yet at suffi- 
cient ' length, after what manner a poet is to live, it 

scriptorum volumina, quibus mundus universal! ter et mera- 
bratim describitur, ratiocinantesque in nobis situationes va- 
rias mundi locorum et eorum habitudinem ad ulrumque 
polum et circulum aequatoreum, multas esse perpendimus 
firmiterque censemus, et magis nobiles et magis deHciosas 
et regiones et urbes, quam Thusciam et Florentiam, unde 
sum oriundus et civis, et plerasque nationes et gentes delec- 
tabiliori atque utiUori sermone uti, quam Latinos.' — De 
Vulgari Eloquio, 1-6. I extract the passage, because in 
translating I have abridged it. 



144 THE LIFE POETIC. 

may be well, before I conclude, to inquire at what 
period of his life he should deem himself to be pre- 
pared for the exercise of his vocation on a large scale. 
And from the nature of some of the preparations 
which have been treated of as indispensable, it will 
plainly appear that this period will not arrive in early 
youth. For if contemplation, action, conversancy with 
life and affairs, varied duties, much solitude in its turn, 
with observation of Nature, and reading select and 
severe if not extensive, be, as I have deemed them to 
be, essential requisites for the writing of poetry in its 
higher and graver kinds, some not inconsiderable 
tract of matured life must have been travelled through 
before these fruits can have been gathered. And with 
this hypothesis our literary history and biography will 
be found to accord. Milton, at twenty-three years of 
age, thought that he ripened slowly ; and when he 
supposed himself less happy in that respect than 
others, doubtless it was because his own deficiencies 
were better known to him than theirs : — ' 

* How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 
Stolen, on his wing, my three-and-twentieth year, 
My hasting days fly on with full career. 

But ray late spring no bud or blossom sheweth. 

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 
That I towards manhood am arrived so near, 
And inward ripeness doth much less appear. 

Than some more timely happy spirits induelh.' 



THE LIFE POETIC. 145 

Even in his twenty-ninth year he regarded his 
poetical efforts, (and comparing himself with himself, 
perhaps wc may say with reason,) as a pkicking of 
the ' berries harsh and crude.' But the history of 
poetry at large would show, I think, that Milton's poet- 
ical faculties were not of slower growth than those of 
other poets of the high and intellectual orders ; and 
that at all events the period of the culmination of 
such poets is in middle life. And with regard to 
exceptional cases — instances of high achievement at 
other periods, — whilst a few may be cited as belong- 
ing to the periods short of middle life, more illustrious 
examples still will be found belonging to periods be- 
yond it. Pope wrote verses with singular grace and 
dexterity in his early youth : but, on the other hand, 
Dryden when he produced the ' Alexander's Feast,' 
was in his sixty-seventh year ; and ' are not the glean- 
ings of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage 
of Abiezer ? ' Goethe may be quoted as an authority 
as well as an example. When the poet, in the pro- 
logue to the Faust, sighs after his lost youth, his friend 
reproves him, and whilst admitting that youth is pro- 
pitious to divers other ends and exercises, declares that, 
for the purposes of poetry, the elder is the better 
man : — 

' The cunning hand of art to fling 
With spirit o'er the accustom'd string j 
10 



146 THE LIFE rOETIC. 

To seem to wander, yet to bend 

Each motion to the harmonious end : 

Sach is the task our ripened age imposes, 

Which makes our day more glorious ere it closes.** 

Nor is it only the poetry of the highest intellectual 
order which is better written after youth than in youth. 
Even for amorous poetry, there is a richer vein than 
that of youth's temperament, and a more attractive art 
than youth can attain to. Let the masters of erotic 
verse be mustered, and it will appear, I think, that few 
or none of them wrote consummately in early youth, 
whilst the best of .them gave utterance to their best 
strains long after they had sung their ' Vixi Puellis.^ 
The sense of proportion, which is required equally in 
the lighter as in the graver kinds of poetry, is natural- 
ly imperfect in youth, through undue ardor in particu- 
lars ; and no very young poet will be content to 
sacrifice special felicities to general effect. Nor can 
there well exist, at an early period of life, that rare and 
peculiar balance of all the faculties, which, even more 
perhaps than a peculiar force in any, constitutes a 
great poet : — the balance of reason with imagination, 
passion with self-possession, abundance with reserve, 
and inventive conception with executive ability. 

On the whole, therefore, it is not desirable that a 
poet should prosecute any great enterprise in early 



THE LIFE POETIC. 147 

youth ; nor is it likely that his lighter efforts will be 
worth much. Nevertheless, it is the period for prac- 
tice and exercise ; and a poet must and will write much 
verse in youth, and he will be much the better for it ; 
nor will he write it with the purpose of throwing it 
away. If he be affected with the usual impatience of 
an ardent temperament in early life, it will perhaps be 
best for him to publish ; for till he have rid himself of 
this impatience, he will not go to work with an ambi- 
tion sufficiently long-sighted and a steady preference of 
ulterior to early results. And publication, if unsuc- 
cessful, (as the juvenile publications of great poets are 
almost sure to be,) is a sedative of much virtue and 
efficacy in such cases. ' Be not ambitious of an early 
fame,' says Mr. Landor, ' for such is apt to shrivel and 
drop under the tree.' Early success puts an end to 
severe study and strenuous endeavor; whereas early 
failure in those in whom there is genuine poetic genius, 
and what commonly accompanies it — 

* Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse — ' * 

acts as a sort of narcotic stimulant, allaying impatience, 
but quickening the deeper mind. 

The outset of a poet's life, and the conduct of it 
^ nel mezzo del cammin' — the seasons in which his 

* Wordsworth. 



148 THE LIFE POETIC. 

poetiy is sown and reaped — are most important to the 
interests of the art and of mankind. The manner in 
which it shall be drawn to a close may be supposed to 
be important chiefly to the poet himself: yet it is not 
altogether so ; and a few words may not be wasted in 
speaking of that latter autumn of a poet's life which 
succeeds his harvest-home. With poets whose life 
reaches its three-score-years-and-ten, this will be a 
period of some years' duration. For the fact that by 
some great poets some short poetical efforts have been 
hazarded in old age with eminent success, should not 
certainly lead to the conclusion that an old man should 
occupy himself in adding to the bulk of his poetical 
works, (especially if already voluminous,) when he can 
no longer hope to enhance their rateable and specific 
value. It is important to every poet to keep his works 
within compass. Moreover, the intensities of life 
should be allowed to come to their natural close some 
steps short of the grave ; and passionate writing should 
not be extended over this period, even if the imagina- 
tion have not ceased to be impassioned. 

There are other ways, at once congenial with the 
poetic life and consentaneous with its decline, in which 
the activities that remain may be gently exercised, 
when the passion has been laid to rest. The long edu- 
cation of a poet's life (for as long as he lives he should 
learn) will have enabled him to detect, at the end of it, 



THE LIFE POETIC. 149 

many faults in his writings which he knew not of be- 
fore ; and there will be many faults, also, of which he 
was cognisant, but which, in the eagerness of his pro- 
ductive years, he had not found leisure or inclination 
to amend. In his old age, as long as the judgment 
and the executive power over details shall be unim- 
paired, — as long as the ha7id shall not have lost its 
cunning, — the work of correction may be carried on 
to completeness, and the poet's house be put in order. 
Some caution will be requisite. Age is prone to fas- 
tidiousness ; and if the poet can no longer go along 
with the ardors of his younger years, he should take 
care lest he quench them with too cold a touch. Age, 
too, is vacillating : and if he have lost his clearness 
and decisiveness of choice, he should not deal with 
any delinquencies of his younger verse except those 
which are flagrant ; and in all his corrections, indeed, 
the presumption should be in favor of the first draft, 
which should have the benefit of the doubt if there be 
one ; otherwise the works may be the worse for the 
last hand. But, subject to these conditions, there seems 
to be no employment better suited to the old age of a 
poet, than that of purifying and making less perishable 
that which he trusts may be the earthly representative 
of his immortal part. 

For such purpose and in so far forth, he may permit 
himself, even at a period when ' the last infirmity ' 



150 THE LIFE POETIC. 

should be on its last legs, to be occupied with himself 
and his fame. But when his own works are as he 
would wish to leave them, nothing of that which is pe- 
culiar to him as a poet and not common to him as a 
man, will so well become his latter days, as to look 
beyond himself and have regard to the future fortunes 
of his art involved in the rising generation of poets. 
It should be his desire and his joy to cherish the lights 
by which his own shall be succeeded, and, perhaps, 
outshone. The personal influence of an old poet 
upon a young one — youth and age being harmonized 
by the sympathies of the art — may do what no writ- 
ings can, to mould those spirits by which, hereafter, 
many are to be moulded ; and as the reflex of a glori- 
ous sunset will sometimes tinge the eastern sky, the 
declining poet may communicate to those who are to 
come after him, not guidance only, but the very colors 
of his genius, the temper of his moral mind, and the 
inspiration of his hopes and promises. That done, or 
ceasing to be practicable through efllux of light, it will 
only remain for the poet to wait in patience and peace. 

'While night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.' * 

* Paradise Lost. 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 



There is a great and grievous complaint in some 
quc.rters, that the Rich are too rich, and that their 
ricl.es are continually increasing, whilst from other 
qua:-ters the complaint is, that those who thus com- 
plain have as great a desire for riches as if they 
saw no harm in them. A few years ago a writer 
of great sagacity and knowledge of the world, repre- 
sented England to be a country in which poverty is 
contemptible. Such an account of things tends to 
propagate the sentiment it proclaims ; because in all 
countries there are many who are prepared to go 
with the stream. But let us hope that it is not a 
true account. There are large numbers of English- 
men, though not, perhaps, of the particular section of 
society which fell more directly under the observa- 
tion of that writer, by whom poverty is not despised, 
unless resulting from indolence or misconduct, and 
by whom riches are not respected, unless well won 
or well spent. 



152 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

Nevertheless it is true enough that riches are too 
much valued by some classes, whilst they are re- 
garded with jealousy by others ; and in the present 
state of society it were well if all classes could be 
led to consider justly, and if none would permit 
themselves to consider enviously or ungently, the 
manner in which riches are expended, and the gen- 
eral demeanor of the Rich and the Great. 

Although the Rich are a small minority of the 
people, there is no reason why their happiness and 
enjoyments should not be cared for; and there is in 
human nature so much of a disposition to sympathize 
with happiness and prosperity, that their enjoyment 
of their wealth will not be unpopular, if it be not 
seen to be selfish or absurd. But it is desirable both 
for the sake of the Rich and Great, and for the sake 
of the sentiments with which the other classes may 
regard them, that what is expended for enjoyment 
should really contribute to enjoyment, and also that 
it should not be more than duly proportioned to vhat 
is expended for the benefit of others. 

The expenditure of the Rich and Great in matters 
of mere appearance is often objected to, and it is 
true that by far the greatest portion of their expendi- 
ture is more for show than for any other species of 
luxury. But this is not to be indiscriminately de- 



THE "WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 153 

noimced ; and those by whom it should be so dealt 
with, even though they were the poorest of the poor, 
would probably be found to be, in their practice, 
within the condemnation of their own principle. 
*What need of five-and-twenty, or of ten, or of five 
followers ? ' said Goneril. ' What need of one ? ' 
added Regan. But the King made answer — 

' Oh reason not the need ; our basest beggars 
Are in the poorest thing superfluous : 
Allow not Nature more than Nature needs, 
Man's life is cheap as beast's ! ' 

The plea of ' supporting the station to, which Provi- 
dence has called us,' is not unmeaning, though it 
be often much abused ; and when it is not abused, 
the common sense of the people will generally recog- 
nise it sufficiently to make matters of show inoffen- 
sive. But in order to give validity to the plea, the 
shows should be such as have attached themselves 
to the station very gradually, so as to form part of 
the transmitted usages of society, and be harmonized 
in men's imaginations. New inventions in the way 
of show, or new extensions of old expenditures in 
this way, are obnoxious, and should tend to derogate 
from the respect in which a man is held by his 
equals, as well as to impair his popularity ; because 
they are evidence that he is not merely sliding into 



154 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

the track which is prepared for him, but deliberately 
turning his thoughts to ostentation. A man's expen- 
diture for show, should therefore belong either to the 
station to which he is born, or to that into which he 
has gradually passed by the natural influence of in- 
creasing riches, superior abilities, or other circum- 
stances, which make the shows incidental to the life 
rather than expressly devised and prepared. Even 
if the show be no more than proportioned to the 
wealth, it will not avoid to be obnoxious, if the wealth 
have been suddenly acquired, and the transition from 
obscurity be abrupt. ' For I,' says Mr. Landor, 

'have shunn'd on every side, 
The splash of newly mounted pride.' 

And who has not? And in whatever measure show 
is indulged, let it be apparent that other things are 
uppermost, and that a man's heart is in his benefi- 
cence and in his business. 

Amongst the superfluities which add nothing to 
the enjoyments of the Rich, and detract from their 
usefulness, may not superfluous houses be numbered ? 
A man who has many houses, will oftentimes have 
no home : for the many objects and associations which 
a man gathers about him, as a shell-fish forms its 
shell, in a conformity with his manner of being, 
cannot be so gathered in more places than one. And 



THE WAYS OF THE KICH AND GREAT. 155 

the perplexity which will beset him from time to 
time, especially if there be different opinions in his 
fomily, in determining to which house to go, will 
more than counteract the pleasures of change ; and 
his life will need more of forecasting. 

And as to usefulness and popularity. Operations 
for the improvement of his neighborhood will be 
interrupted or impaired by changing from house to 
house, and his own interest in them will be broken 
and imperfect. If on the other hand he leave any 
of his houses long unoccupied, the neighborhood is 
deprived of the services which are due from a resi- 
dent man of property. And moreover there is a 
sense of waste in seeing a house constantly and 
deliberately left unoccupied. It is something good, 
which is neither to be used and enjoyed, nor sold 
nor lent, nor given — one of the most naked, forms 
of superfluity. 

If these views be just, it would follow that rich 
men should not wantonly embarrass themselves with 
many houses ; and that those to whom they have 
accrued as unavoidable adjuncts of large estates, 
should, if possible, let them even for a nominal rent, 
or establish in them some junior members of their 
family. 

There are objections also to an excessive extent 
of park, pleasure-ground, and demesne. For this 



156 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

tends to isolate the owner, and to place his neighbors 
and his duty to his neighbors at a distance from him. 
The physical element of distance will often make 
an important difference in a man's relations with his 
fellow-creatures. An extensive park introduces more 
or less of this element in the case of all a man's 
neighbors except his lodge-keepers ; and a great 
extent of contiguous landed property added to this, 
introduces it in respect of all his neighbors except 
his tenants. This is no small evil. The tenantry 
and dependents of the Rich and Great are not the 
only persons with whom they should be in relations 
of good neighborhood. It is perhaps equally impor- 
tant that they should be in such relations with the 
clergy and the smaller gentry around them. The 
attraction of cohesion by which society is to be kept 
together, will not be brought about by an approxi- 
mation of its opposite poles, but by an attraction of 
the nearest to the nearest throughout the social body. 
The distancing of country neighbors by large parks 
and estates is the more to be deprecated now, because 
railroads have recently operated in the same direction, 
by filling great country-houses more than ever with 
metropolitan society. 

In this case again, what is to be done when parks 
of this excessive extent have descended to the owners, 
consecrated, perhaps, by hereditary and historical 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 157 

associations:* — or when they could not be disparked 
or contracted in size without injury to the beauty 
of the country ? Little, perhaps, to abate the specific 
evil ; but much to compensate for it. Such parks, 
instead of being disparked, may be popularized. 
Access should never be refused to strangers ; certain 
spaces in them should be assigned for the sports of 
the neighboring peasantry ; and periodical games and 
festivities should be celebrated in them for the benefit 
of the neighbors of all classes. The Aristocrat should 
ever bear in mind, that his position has something 
in it of a public and national character, and that 
aristocratic possessions exist for popular purposes. 

That portion of the expenditure of the Rich which 
is devoted to luxuries of the table, may escape the 
observation of the Poor, and be, therefore, perhaps 
less unpopular than it ought to be. But of all excess 
in luxury, that of the table is the most offensive to 
the taste of those who would wish to see the higher 
classes distinguished by refinement at least, if not by 
simplicity of Hfe. To do the Rich justice, the extent 
to which this species of expenditure is carried in 
these times, is to be attributed less to sensuality than 
to ostentation; and it is to parade expenditure rather 
than to pamper the appetite, that those never-ending 
still-beginning dinners are served up, at which a 



158 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

person of a taste unvitiated by custom could hardly 
look on without a sense of dreariness and disgust. 
That the offence to good taste is wanton and gratui- 
tous rather than gluttonous, may be inferred from the 
small quantity of the dainties displayed that is really 
eaten ; and one proof out of many that costliness is 
chiefly aimed at, is to be found in the practice of 
providing esculents which are out of season. By a 
true and unsophisticated taste, what is out of season 
would be rejected as out of keeping with Nature ; 
and even without reference to any such principle of 
taste, a strawberry in March is at all events no better 
than a strawberry in July, though it is about a hun- 
dred times dearer ; and by our greedy anticipations 
and our jumbling together of the products of the 
seasons, we deprive ourselves of that change and 
variety which Nature, in her own orderly successions, 
would provide. 

But if the motive for this sort of sumptuousness is 
display more than gluttony, it has, nevertheless, a most 
pernicious tendency to promote gluttony; and, indeed, 
the length of time that people are required to sit at 
these dinners would be intolerable if there were not 
much eating and drinking to fill it up. The sensuality 
is not so gross, certainly, as that of our drunken fore- 
fathers ; but having regard to the fact that dinners are 
late as well as long, and that in these times men's brains 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 159* 

are taxed as well as their stomachs, the pressure on 
health is perhaps almost as severe. It has been ob- 
served by an eminent physician, that more pressure of 
that kind results from a life of steady high living than 
from one of occasional debauch. To long and late 
dinners, longer and later social entertainments of 
divers kinds succeed, till the sun rises upon a worn- 
out world. Everything in the nature of an amusement 
is protracted and strained, and there cannot be a* 
greater mistake than this in the economy of enjoy- 
ment. The art of carrying off a pleasure is not to sit 
it out. 

Expense in furniture is perhaps as innocent as 
any expense can be which is not meritorious. Yet 
the internal garnishing and decorations of a house 
have nothing of the public and patriotic attributes 
which may be ascribed to the house itself, if it be 
designed as a work of architectural art, to adorn the 
land from age to age. The garnishings are for the 
more exclusive and selfish enjoyment of the owner 
and of those whom he may admit to his society, and 
they are fugitive and perishing. Therefore the very 
large proportionate expenditure of the Rich in these 
times on luxuries of furniture (designated, perhaps, 
by the sober and respectable name of ' comforts ') is, 
to say the least, not to be commended. Moreover, 



160 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

many of these luxuries are in reality less conducive 
to comfort than what is cheap and common ; and there 
are many more which impair the comfort through the 
health. The air we breathe in our rooms would be 
lighter and fresher if there were no such things as 
carpets, window-curtains, bed-curtains, or valances ; 
and the more full and heavy the draperies of a room, 
the less light and nimble is the air. And this effect 
is aggravated if the room be spacious. It is an error 
to suppose that rooms which are very large and lofty 
are more airy than others. They may be more airy 
than very small rooms, but they are less so (and this 
is well known to the asthmatic) than rooms of mod- 
erate dimensions, every corner of which is near the 
external air. Again, the love of displaying cost and 
magnificence in furniture is seldom accompanied, even 
amongst the richest of the rich, by an indifference as 
to whether it is spoilt or blemished : and yet solicitude 
on this point militates much against comfort. The sun 
is often shut out to save the color of carpets and cur- 
tains, at times when Nature's sunshine might well be 
preferred to the best of upholstery. In short, there 
are a hundred ways in which luxury overreaches 
itself — a hundred in which penance enters into the 
worship of Mammon. Double windows make our 
rooms close. Artificial waters poison our parks. And 
one truth the Rich would do well to keep in mind, for 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 161 

very comfort's sake — that comfort, like health, may- 
be impaired by being too anxiously cared for. 

Very different is the view to be taken of a Rich 
man's in-door expenditure, when he is sparing of mir- 
rors and jars and satin and velvet-pile, but lavish in 
objects which address themselves to the intellectual 
and imaginative tastes. In libraries, and works of art, 
pictures, sculpture, and engravings, a rich house can- 
not be too rich : and the house of an educated gentle- 
man should no more be without the works of Michael 
Angelo or Raphael, in one form or another, than with- 
out the works of Milton and Shakspeare. And with 
regard to the galleries of the Rich, if unoccupied as 
apartments, should they not be always open to stran- 
gers ? and if they be so occupied, should they not be 
open on certain days of every week ? In the Palazzo 
Borghese at Rome, the rooms are not only always 
open, but they are provided with fires in cold weather, 
with seats, catalogues, and tubes to look through, so 
that the stranger feels himself to be a guest, and the 
guest of a gentleman, and is sensible, not only of the 
mere liberality of the owner, but of his attentions, 
courtesy, and good-breeding. 

As to the free access to libraries, and the free loan 
of books, those who lend books no doubt run some 
risk of losing them. There is nothing which bor- 
11 



162 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

rowers take so little care to return. Yet the value of 
a book is only realized in proportion as it is read. A 
book which is never read is of absolutely no value. 
Therefore, though many books are said to be lost by 
lending them, more are lost indeed by leaving them on 
the shelf. And for the personal and particular loss to 
the owner, he loses more than he need, if he allows 
himself to be cheated of his liberality by the occa- 
sional thoughtlessness or thanklessness of those whom 
he gratifies. That old scholar and gentleman who, 
after his name written in Latin in the blank page of 
his books, wrote ' et amicorum ejus,' had a better 
possession than that of a library. But the Rich might 
guard their possessions in books by keeping a libra- 
rian, who would not cost so much (alas !) as an under 
butler or a groom of the chambers. 

Amongst the most important of the relations in 
which the Rich and Great stand to their fellow- 
creatures, are their relations with their servants and 
their relations with their tradesmen. 

Under the former head, there may be, perhaps, 
little to find fault with on the score of mere manner 
and outward demeanor. To use servants with harsh- 
ness, or to be wanting in that species of consideration 
for them which consists in a certain mildness and 
amenity of manner, would ruffle and deform that 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 163 

smooth surface of things which it is agreeable to 
the taste of people in high life to see around them. 
Nor do they, perhaps, interfere with the comforts of 
their dependents by any undue or onerous exactions of 
service ; for their establishments, being for the most 
part calculated for show, are more numerous than is 
required for use, and are therefore necessarily under- 
worked, except, perhaps, in the case of some poor 
drudges at the bottom, who slink up and down the 
back stairs unseen, and whose comfort, therefore, may 
not always engage the attention of a family of this 
class ; and even these will not be oppressed with their 
labors, unless when some impoverished people of 
fashion may find it necessary to dock the tails of their 
establishments in order to keep the more prominent 
portions entire. 

Nevertheless the exceptions which may be taken 
against the life of the Rich and Great, as affecting 
the class of servants, are of a very grave description. 
Late hours and habits of dissipation in the heads of 
a family make it almost impossible, especially in 
London, to exercise that wholesome household disci- 
pline which is requisite to secure the well-being of a 
servant. The usages of high life require that the 
servants of these people should be numerous; their 
number unavoidably makes them idle ; idleness makes 
them debauched; debauchery renders them often ne- 



164 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

cessitous ; the affluence or the prodigality, the indo- 
lence or indulgence or indifference of their masters, 
affords them every facility for being dishonest ; and 
beginning with the more venial kinds of peculation, 
their conscience has an opportunity of making an 
easy descent through the various gradations of lar- 
ceny, till the misdemeanant passes into the felon. In 
the meantime, the master, taking no blame to himself, 
nor considering that servants are, to no inconsiderable 
extent, what their masters make them, — that they 
are the creatures, at least, of those circumstances 
which their' masters throw around them, and might 
be moulded in the generality of cases, with a fair 
prospect of successful results, by the will and conduct 
of the master — passes over, with an indolent and 
epicurean censure, the lighter delinquencies which he 
may happen to detect, laughs perhaps at his own 
laxity, and, when at length alarmed, discharges the 
culprit without a character, and relieves himself, at 
the expense of he knows not whom, by making of 
a corrupted menial a desperate outcast. Hospitals, 
work-houses, and prisons, swarm with the broken- 
down servants of the Rich ; and it is but a small 
portion of them that live to be old. 

If it be said that a man cannot be expected ta 
change his mode of life for the sake of his servants, 
it must be answered, that a mode of life which 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 165 

hazards the perdition of several of his fellow-crea- 
tures, ovglit to be changed, and cannot be persevered 
in without guilt. But if no such sacrifice were con- 
sented to, there remain means by which the evil 
might be mitigated. 

A reduction in the number of servants would be 
one great means of promoting their well-being, and 
would involve no real sacrifice of comfort or even 
of luxuiy. The way to be well served is to keep 
few servants ; and the keeping of superfluous servants 
is one of the many ways in which luxury is self- 
destroyed. Some little time ago, a lady who kept 
nine men-servants, after several vain attempts to get 
some coals for her fire, received from her butler the 
explanation that none of the footmen would bring 
them up, because ' the odd man ' had forgotten to 
fill the scuttles ; the odd man on such establishments, 
being the drudge who is hired to do the work of the 
house. Thus it is that the multiplying of means will 
often defeat the end ; work is seldom well done except 
by those who have much to do ; the idleness of one 
hour spreads itself rapidly over the whole twenty-four ; 
and servants whose numbers are calculated for show 
become unavailable for use. 

And again, even good servants conduce less to 
comfort on many occasions than is often supposed. 
Is it not frequently most for your comfort to serve 



166 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

yourself? How much easier to get yourself some- 
thing, than to wait doing nothing till it is gotten for 
you. For impatience is prevented or abated by instru- 
mental activity. ' A watched pot is long in boiling,' 
says the proverb : but go into the garden, gather some 
dry sticks, put them under the pot and blow the bel- 
lows, and you will not have felt it long. And a rich 
man, though aware of this, may not be able to help 
himself; for his household being formed upon the 
system of everything being done for him, the system 
becomes too strong for him, and he will not be per- 
mitted to do^ though often compelled to wait. 

Every superfluous servant removed, not only re- 
moves from the master one superfluous responsibility, 
but also lightens the difficulties of exercising due 
discipline over those that remain. It diminishes the 
risk of disorders and disputes, not merely by sub- 
tracting one from the chances ; for the one super- 
fluous servant who is the cause of idle time in the 
establishment, will probably open as many sources 
of dissipation and discontent as there are members 
of the household ; and many servants, having little 
occupation, will invariably employ their leisure in 
quarrelling with each other : — 

' Nothing to do was Master Squabble's mother, 
And much ado his child.' 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 167 

But in recommending that the numbers of servants 
should bo so reduced as to give them full work, let 
this be understood to mean full work in working 
hours only, always taking care that there be fair time 
allowed for relaxation — time, in the case of those 
who will so use it, for reading and self-cultivation — 
and occasional time for the maintenance of those 
original domestic affections which, in the circumstan- 
ces in which servants are placed, are so apt to be 
supplanted. 

Another way in which the characters of seiTants 
in high life might be improved, would be by seeing 
their masters a little more scrupulous than some of 
the more fashionable amongst them are wont to be, 
in matters of truth and honesty. The adherence to 
honesty on the part of the masters might be exem- 
plary ; whereas their actual measure of honesty would 
perhaps be indicated with sufficient indulgence, if 
they were described (in the qualified language which 
Hamlet applies to himself) to be ' indifferent honest.' 
And there is a currency of untruth in daily use 
amongst fashionable people for purposes of conve- 
nience, which proceeds to a much bolder extent than 
the form of well-understood falsehood by which the 
middle classes also, not perhaps without some occa- 
sional violation of their more tender consciences, 
excuse themselves from receiving a guest. Fashion- 



168 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

able people, moreover, are the most unscrupulous 
smugglers and buyers of smuggled goods, and have 
less difficulty than others and less shame, in making 
various illicit inroads upon the public property and 
revenue. It is not to be denied that these practices 
are, in point of fact, a species of lying and cheating ; 
and the latter of them bears a close analogy to the 
sort of depredation in which the dishonesty of a 
servant commonly commences. To a servant it must 
seem quite as venial an offence to trench upon the 
revenues of a duke, as to the duke it may seem to de- 
fraud the revenues of a kingdom. Such proceedings, 
if not absolutely to be branded as dishonest, are not at 
least altogether honorable ; they are such as may be 
more easily excused in a menial than in a gentleman. 
Nor can it ever be otherwise than of evil example to 
make truth and honesty matters of degree. 

But there is a worse evil in the manners of this 
country in regard to servants. It is rarely that they 
are considered in any other light than as mechanical 
instruments. It unfortunately belongs very little to 
our national character, to feel what the common 
brotherhood of humanity requires of us in a relation 
with our fellow-creatures, which, however unequal, 
is so close as that of master and servant. We are 
not accustomed to be sensible that it is any part of 
our duty to enter into their feelings, to understand 



I 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 169 

their dispositions, to acquire their confidence, to culti- 
vate their sympathies and our own upon some common 
ground which kindness might always discover, and to 
communicate with them habitually and unreservedly 
upon the topics which touch upon that ground. This 
deficiency would, perhaps, be more observable in the 
middle classes than in the highest — who seem gen- 
erally to treat their inferior with less reserve — but 
that in the latter the scale of establishment often 
removes the greater part of a man's servants from 
personal communication with him. Whether most 
prevalent in the fashionable or in the unfashionable 
classes, it is an evil which in the growing disunion 
of the several grades of society, is now more than 
ever, and for more reasons than one, to be re- 
gretted. 

The operation of the habits of the Rich and Great 
upon the class of tradesmen, (and here, again, refer- 
ence should be made more especially to those amongst 
the Rich and Great who form what are called the 
fashionable circles,) — the operation of their habits 
of life upon tradesmen is, perhaps, a subject of 
greater moral and political importance than either, 
party is aware of. 

People of fashion are for the most part improvi- 
dent : but even when they are not so in the long run, 



170 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

it seems to be their pride to be wantonly and per- 
versely disorderly in the conduct of their pecuniary 
transactions. The result of this to themselves is not 
here the point in question, — although there are few 
things which in their effects are more certain to 
pervade the entire moral structure of the mind, than 
habits of order and punctuality, especially in money 
matters ; nor is there anything to which character and 
honor are more likely to give way than to pecuniary 
difficulties. But what are the consequences to the 
tradesmen with whom they deal ? In proportion to 
the delays which the tradesman has had to contend 
with in procuring payment of the account, is the 
degree of laxity with which he may expect to be 
favored in the examination of the items ; especially 
if he have not omitted the usual means of corrupting 
the fidelity of servants. The accuracy of a bill of 
old date is not in general very ascertainable, and it 
would seem to be but an ungracious return for the 
accommodation which the creditor has afforded, if 
the debtor were to institute a very strict inquisition 
into the minutise of his claims. These considerations 
concur with the habitual carelessness and indolence 
■ of people of fashion, as inducements to them to lead 
their tradesmen into temptation ; and the result is 
such a demoralization of the whole class, that it is 
rare indeed to meet with a tradesman accustomed to 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 171 

be employed by people of fashion, whose accounts, 
if closely scrutinized, would not betray a want of 
integrity and fair dealing. The tradesman's want of 
probity again, will second the customer's want of 
care ; and he will often, from dishonest motives, per- 
tinaciously resist sending in a bill of short date ; well 
knowing in what cases he can rely upon an ultimate 
payment in full, of an account ' of which the memory 
of man runneth not to the contrary.' 

Again, people of fashion, though (with occasional 
coarse exceptions) very civil-spoken to their trades- 
men, are accustomed to show in their conduct an 
utter disregard of what amount of trouble, inconve- 
nience, and vexation of spirit they may occasion, 
either by irregularity in paying their bills, by requir- 
ing incessant attendance, or by a thousand fanciful 
humors, changes of purposes, and fastidious objections. 
Possibly, indeed, they are very little aware of the 
amount of it ; so inconsiderate are they of every- 
thing which is not made to dance before their eyes, 
or to appeal to their sensibilities through their senses. 
Their tradesmen, and the workmen whom their trades- 
men employ, are compelled, those by the competition 
they encounter in their business, these by the necessi- 
ties of their situation in life, to submit to all the 
hardships and disquietudes which it is possible for 
fashionable caprice to impose, without showing any 



172 THE WAYS OF THE KICK AND GREAT. 

sign of disturbance or discontent; and because there 
is no outcry made, por any pantomime exhibited, the 
fashionable customer may possibly conceive that he 
dispenses nothing but satisfaction among all with 
whom he deals. He rests assured, moreover, that if 
he gives more trouble and inconvenience than others, 
he pays for it ; the charges of the tradesmen of 
fashionable people being excessively high. Here, 
however, there is a distinction to be taken. There 
is no doubt that all the fantastical plagues and pre- 
posterous caprices which the spirit of fashion can . 
engender, will be submitted to for money : but he 
who supposes that the outward submission will be 
accompanied by no inward feelings of resentment or 
contempt, either is wholly ignorant of human nature 
or grossly abuses his better judgment. Between 
customer and tradesman the balance is adjusted : 
between man and man there is an account which 
money will not settle. It is not indeed to be desired 
that any class of men should be possessed with such 
a spirit of venal servility, as to be really insensible 
to the folly and oppression which enters into the ex- 
actions of fashionable caprice ; or that, however com- 
pelled to be obsequious in manner, they should alto- 
gether lose their perception of what is due to common 
sense and common consideration for others — 

' And by the body's action teach the mind 
A most inherent baseness.' 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 173 

If such be the actual result in some instances, then 
is that consequence still more to be regretted than 
the other. 

Moreover, if the master-tradesmen are willing to 
sell themselves into this slavery, the consequences 
to the m.uch more numerous classes of those whom 
they employ, remains to be taken into the account. 
These, at least, are not paid for the hardships which 
ensue to them. Many is the milliner's apprentice 
whom every London season sends to her grave, 
because the dresses of fine ladies must be completed 
with a degree of celerity which nothing but night 
labor can accomplish. To the question, ' When must 
it be done ? ' ' Immediately,' is the readiest answer ; 
though it is an answer which would perhaps be less 
inconsiderately and indiscriminately given, if it were 
known how many young creatures have come to a 
premature death in consequence of it, and how many 
hearts have been hardened by the oppression which 
it necessitates. Nor does the evil stop there. The 
dressmaker's apprentices in a great city have another 
alternative ; and it is quite as much to escape from 
the intolerable labors which are imposed upon them 
in the London season, as from any sexual frailty, 
that such multitudes of them adopt a vocation which 
affords some immediate relief, while it ensures a 
doubly fatal termination of their career. The temp- 



174 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

tatlons by which these gh'ls are beset might be deemed 
all-sufficient, without the compulsion by which they 
are thus, as it were, driven out into the streets. Upon 
them, 'the fatal gift of beauty' has been more lavishly 
bestowed than upon any other class — perhaps not 
excepting even the aristocracy. There are many of 
them, probably, the spurious offspring of aristocratical 
fathers, and inherit beauty for the same reason as the 
legitimate daughters of aristocrats, because the wealth 
of these persons enables them to select the most 
beautiful women either for wives or for concubines. 
Nor are they wanting in the grace and simplicity of 
manner which distinguish the aristocracy ; whilst 
constant manual occupation produces in them more 
vacuity of mind, than even that which dissipation 
causes in their sisters of the superior class. They 
are thus possessed of exterior attractions, which will 
at any moment place them in a condition of com- 
parative affluence, and keep them in it so long as 
those attractions last, — a period beyond which their 
portion of thought and foresight can scarcely be 
expected to extend : whilst, on the other hand, they 
have before them a most hitler and arduous servitude, 
constant confinement, probably a severe task- mistress, 
(whose mind is harassed and exacerbated by the 
exigent and thoughtless demands of her employers,) 
and a destruction of health and bloom which the 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 175 

alternative course of life can scarcely make more 
certain or more speedy. Goethe was well aware 
how much light he threw upon the seduction of 
Margaret, when he made her let fall a hint of dis- 
content at domestic hardships : — 

' Our humble household is but small, 
And 1, alas ! must look to all. 
We have no maid, and I may scarce avail 

To wake so early and to sleep so late ; 
And then my mother is in each detail 
So accurate.'* 

If people of fashion knew at what cost some of 
their imaginary wants are gratified, it is possible that 
they might be disposed to forego the gratification ; it 
is possible, also, that they might not. On the one hand 
they are not wanting in benevolence to the young and 
beautiful ; the juster charge against them being that 
their benevolence extends no farther. On the other 
hand, unless there be a visual perception of the youth 
and beauty which is to suffer, or in some way a distinct 
image of it presented, dissipation will not allow them a 
moment for the feelings which reflection might sug- 
gest : 

* Than vanity there's nothing harder hearted ; 
For thoughtless of all sufferings unseen, 

* ' Faust,' Lord F. L. Gower's translation. 



176 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

Of all save those which touch upon the round 
Of the day's palpable doings, the vain man, 
And oftener still the volatile. woman vain, 
Is busiest at heart with restless cares, 
Poor pains and paltry joys, that make within 
Petty yet turbulent vicissitude.' 

If it be against people of fashion mainly that these 
charges lie, there is another and a heavier charge, 
which lies against the aristocratic classes generally ; 
and not against them only, but also against no incon- 
siderable portion of the classes next below them. 
Many, we fear most, of the mothers of these classes, 
are in the habit of refusing to suckle their children, 
even when perfectly able to do so, and of bribing the 
mothers of the Poor to abandon their duty to their own 
infants, in order to perform the function thus devolved. 
A denunciation of this practice was delivered some 
years ago by an eminent person in the House of 
Lords, which it were well if he would repeat every 
session till the country shall be cleansed from so foul 
an offence. It may be stated, on the highest medical 
authority, that out of every five infants of wet-nurses 
thus deserted, four perish. They are delivered over to 
women who take no interest in them, to be brought up 
by hand — a species of nurture peculiarly requiring a 
mother's care and the aids and appliances of wealth ; 
they die miserably of starvation or neglect, and their 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 177 

death is to be laid at the door, not so much of their 
own mothers whose poverty consents, as of those who 
corrupt the maternal instincts of the Poor, and betray 
them into a cruelty which nothing but ignorance and 
poverty can palliate. The injunction ' Thou shalt not 
seethe the kid in its mother's milk,' pointed to a lesser 
sin than this. 

Erasmus held her to be scarcely half a mother who 
refused to suckle the child that was born to her. He 
accounted the offence against nature as little less than 
that of the desertion and exposure of an infant ; and 
he asks her, when the child began to speak, with 
what face could she hear him call her mother, who 
had neglected to perform for him that most maternal 
office. In our times the lady's child may not suffer, 
but the child of the nurse is much more certainly 
sacrificed ; and thus it is that one unnatural mother 
makes another that is more unnatural still.* 

But besides those who are able, but not willing, to 

* ' AHoqui cum infans jam fari meditabitur, ac blanda, 
balbutie te mammam vocabit, qua fronte hoc audies ab eo, 
cui mammara negiris, et ad conductitiam mammam releguris, 
perinde quasi caprae aut ovi subjecisses ? Ubi jam erit fandi 
potens, quid si te pro malre vocet semi-matrem ? Yirgam 
expedies, opinor. Atqui vix semi-mater est, quae recusal 
alere, quod peperit . . . Et in tales foeminas mihi competere 
Graicorum videtur etymologia, qui u»/r/;(? diet putant k ul^ 
12 



178 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

suckle their infants, there are many who profess to be 
willing, but not able. Do they diligently try ? or do 
they satisfy their consciences with the easy assurances 
of nurses, attendants, or friends, who are willing to 
say what they desire to hear ? If they he unable, does 
not their inability grow out of a luxurious and un- 
wholesome mode of life, which there is no necessity 
that they should adopt ? and why should the children 
of the Poor be defrauded of their mother's milk, to 
supply deficiencies wilfully created by the indolence 
and luxury of the Rich ? Occasional cases there are, 
no doubt, in which the inability to suckle is both real 
and inevitable ; and if these cases cannot be met by 
the employment of such wet-nurses as have already 
lost their children through natural causes, the wet-nurse 
should bring her own child with her ; and with the 
sufficient supervision which wealth and maternal vigi- 
lance might supply on the part of a rich mother, to 
guard against maternal partiality on the part of the 
wet-nurse, a fair and equal share of natural nurture 
should be secured to the one child and the other; 
what is wanting to each being made up by the best 
artificial substitute. 



rriQBiv, hoc est, k non servando. Nam prorsus conductitiam 
nutricem infantulo adhuc k matre tepenti adsciscere, genus est 
expositionis,' — Erasmi Colloq. Puerpera. 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 179 

Amongst the incidental evils of the system of wet- 
nursing, one is that unmarried mothers are most fre- 
quently employed, and not unfrequently preferred, for 
this purpose ; and being pampered as well as highly 
paid, a countenance and encouragement is afforded to 
vice, and women of tainted character are mixed up 
with the rich man's household. On the other hand, if 
the wet-nurse be married, it is almost invariably (and 
for physical reasons) made a condition, that during the 
period for which she is hired she shall not see her hus- 
band ; and he and her elder children are exposed to 
the temptations and evils consequent on such a disrup- 
tion of domestic ties. 

The charge of deserting the mother's function in the 
suckling of infants lies, as has been said, against other 
classes, as well as against the Rich and Great ; but 
the practice is more universal amongst the Rich and 
Great ; it is politically more important that they should 
rescue themselves from the reproach of it ; their ex- 
ample is of more account; nor is there any person in 
the realm, however high in station, who, on the very 
ground of that rank and pre-eminence, should not be 
the foremost to withstand this crying corruption of the 
humanities of domestic life. 

When such accusations as these are brought against 
the wealthier classes, it ought by no means to be for- 



180 THE "WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

gotten that such things are exceptional, not character- 
istic ; and that there is amongst those classes in these 
times an activity in charitable works, and a bounty and 
beneficence, such as probably has never been witnessed 
in the world before. All classes have been rapidly 
improving in the last five-and-twenty years. Increase 
of crime does not prove the contrary, even of the 
lowest class; it only proves an increased activity of 
the bad elements as well as of the good ; it may show 
that bad men are worse, — it does not show that fewer 
men are not bad, or that good men are not far more 
than proportionately better. But if other classes have 
improved, (the commercial least, perhaps, owing to 
over-stimulated love of gain,) there qan be little ques- 
tion that the higher classes have stepped the farthest in 
advance. Ask our bishops who are the best of the 
clergy, and will they not answer, the middle-aged 
and the young, rather than the old or the elderly ? 
Amongst the country gentlemen not advanced in 
years, how few are there now who think that they 
have nothing else to do in life but to make the most of 
their property and their game. The charity of the 
Rich is often, indeed, misdirected and mischievous; 
their liberality sometimes runs ahead of their personal 
activity as almoners ; their judgment still more often 
halts behind their personal activity. But as long as it 
is the spirit of love and duty which is active in them. 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 181 

they must be doing good, if not to others, at least to 
thennselves : and in spite of all the errors of injudicious 
zeal, they will do well upon the whole, and they will 
be continually learning to do better. 

The system of visiting the poor at their houses has 
been much found fault with for its obtrusiveness. It is 
very certain that the somevvhat unsocial character and 
manners of the English, both rich and poor, does put 
difficulties in the way of it. It is not all sorts of 
ladies and gentlemen who can carry it out with suc- 
cess, and now that so much is done by organization 
and the division of labor, it would seem desirable that 
charitable persons should consider what are their per- 
sonal aptitudes, and employ themselves accordingly in 
this or other departments of charitable ministration. 
Even in that of visiting, there are many varieties. 
Where there is grievous sickness or other emergency, 
zeal and care will compensate for dryness of manner. 
In the more ordinary intercourse of good offices, it is 
very important to be pleasant to the Poor : for services 
alone will not cultivate their affections ; and those who 
would visit them for every-day purposes of charity, 
should be by their nature and temperament genial, 
cordial, and firm. 

But charity in detail to the lower orders will afford 
no sufficient vent for what should be considered the 
due and adequate bounty of the Rich and Great, — 



182 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

not even though it b^ distributed through numerous 
and well -chosen almoners. The Poor of the lower 
orders are not the only Poor ; they are not always 
the Poor who are most to be pitied for their poverty ; 
and it devolves upon the Rich and Great to take 
charge of the many cases of penury in the classes 
more proximate to their own, which they have the 
means of duly sifting and appreciating. To them also 
belong works of munificence, — the providing and en- 
dowing of churches, schools, hospitals ; and to these 
let them add, libraries, picture-galleries, public gardens 
and play-grounds, for the Poor. In order that the 
Poor may feel that the Rich are in sympathy with 
them, the Rich must take a pleasure in their pleasures, 
as well as pity them in their distress. When the Rich 
give of their abundance to those who want bread, it 
may be supposed to be done for very shame, or under 
the constraint of common humanity. When they take 
order for the instruction and discipline of the Poor, 
they are conferring a species of benefit, for which, 
however essential, they must not expect a return in 
gratitude or affection. But if they bear in mind that 
amusement is in truth a necessary of life, that human 
nature cannot dispense with it, and that by the nature 
of men's amusements their moral characters are, in a 
great measure, determined, they will be led so to deal 
with the Poor as to make it manifest to them that they 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 183 

like to see them happy, and they will be beloved ac- 
cordingly. 

But if the amusements of men have so much to 
do in forming them, it may be well to consider what 
are the amusements of the Rich and Great themselves. 
Into these it will be found that the ambitious activity 
of the times has made its way. It is no longer 
enough for the Rich and Great to be passively 
entertained ; to look on and admire does not content 
them ; and hence the theatre has fallen out of favor. 
They must be where they are themselves in part 
performers, or they must find their amusement in the 
prosecution of some object and end. Society, there- 
fore, becomes their theatre ; and to the not incon- 
siderable number of them who constitute what are 
called the 'fashionable circles,' a particular position 
and reputation in society becomes an object, in the 
pursuit ctf which they find their amusement. 

The effect of this upon the character is not favor- 
able. It used to be supposed that whatsoever of 
effort and uneasy pretension might prevail elsewhere, 
in the highest walk of society, amongst those whose 
born rank and worldly consideration was unquestion- 
able, where nothing further was to be attained and 
eveiything possessed was secure, the charm of confi- 
dence and quiescence would be found at last. But 



184 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

when into this circle, as into others, the pursuit of a 
personal object is introduced, into this, as into others, 
cares and solicitudes will accompany it ; and the 
object of success in a social career has little in it 
that is elevating, or can help much to modify the 
selfishness of human nature. Into circles, therefore, 
where social reputation is aimed at, rather than merely 
the giving and receiving of pleasure, the feelings 
connected with the lower kinds of rivalry and com- 
petition must be expected to intrude, disturbing, in 
some more or less degree, the ease and grace of 
aristocratic life. And accordingly fashionable society, 
whatever may be its charms and brilliancy, when 
compared with other aristocratic society, is said to 
be characterized by some inferiority of tone, even 
in its higher walks ; and in its lower by a tone which, 
without any desire to use hard words, can hardly be 
called anything else than vulgar. 

It may, no doubt, be said for these circles, that 
talents are appreciated in them ; and if talents were 
the one thing needful in this world, on that they 
might take their stand. But it is not by the posses- 
sion and cultivation of talents, but by the best use and 
direction of them, that the aristocracy of this country 
is to be sustained in public estimation. Knowledge 
and ability which are merely made subservient to 
conversational effects, will do nothing for the aris- 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 185 

tocracy. We may well allow that in the casual 
intercourse of life, or as common acquaintances, 
people of fashion, in spite of occasional inferiorities 
and vulgarities, are the most agreeable people that 
are to be met with. How should it be otherwise ? 
That persons who have spent their lives in cultivating 
the arts of society should have acquired no peculiar 
dexterity in the exercise of them, would be as strange 
as that one who had spent his life as a hackney 
coachman, should not know his way through the 
streets. Those who have been trained in the habits 
of society from their childhood, will generally be 
free from timidity, which is the most ordinary source 
of affectation. By those who are free from timidity, 
unaffected, and possessed of an average share of 
intelligence, address in conversation is easily to be 
attained with much less practice than the habits of 
fashionable life afford. It is an art which, like that 
of the singer, the dancer, and the actor, is almost 
sure to be acquired, up to a certain mark, by prac- 
tising with those who understand it. The elite of 
such society, therefore, will probably be found to be 
more adroit, vivacious, and versatile in their talk than 
others, more prompt and nimble in their wit, and 
more graceful and perfect in the performance of the 
many little feats of agility in conversation, which 
come easily to those who have been used to consider 



186 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

language rather as a toy than as an instrument. At 
the same time, even if entertainment were the only- 
thing to be sought, a man of sense who should seek 
it in this style of conversation, would probably fall 
upon much that would be offensive to his taste, and 
not a little to which he would refuse the name of 
good breeding. He would find, perhaps, that sharp- 
ness and repartee were in general aimed at more 
than enough ; and that some persons possessed of a 
small sort of talent, and but meagrely provided with 
subject-matter of discourse, cultivate habitually a 
spirit of sarcasm and disparagement to which they 
do not very well understand how to give a proper 
direction. Quickness has justly been observed by 
Mr. Lander to be amongst the least of the mind's 
properties : ' I would persuade you,' says that very 
brilliant and remarkable writer, ' that banter, pun, 
and quibble, are the properties of light men and 
shallow capacities ; that genuine humor and true wit 
require a sound and capacious mind, which is always 
a grave one.'* 

Conversation is, in truth, an exercise very danger- 
ous to the understanding when practised in any large 
measure as an art or an amusement. To be ready 

* Landor's ' Imaginary Conversations,' 1st Series, Vol. 2, 
p. 404, 2d edition. 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 187 

to speak before he has time to think, to say something 
apt and specious, — something which he may very 
well be supposed to think when he has nothing to 
say that he really does think, — to say what is con- 
sistent with what he has said before, to touch topics 
lightly and let them go, — these are the arts of a 
conversationist: of which perhaps the last is the 
worst, because it panders to all the others. Nothing 
is searched out by conversation of this kind, — noth- 
ing is heartily believed, whether by those who say 
it or by those who hear it. It may be easy, graceful, 
clever, and sparkling, and bits of knowledge may 
be plentifully tossed to and fro in it; but it will be 
vain and unprofitable: it may cultivate a certain 
micacious, sandy surface of the mind, but all that 
lies below will be unmoved and unsunned. To say 
that it is vain and unprofitable, is, indeed, to say too 
little ; for the habit of thinking with a view to conver- 
sational effects, will inevitably corrupt the understand- 
ing, which will never again be sound or sincere. 

The dealings of these people with literature and 
art, like their dealings with society, have some tinc- 
ture of personal ambition. Books are not read, 
pictures seen, or music listened to, merely for the 
delight to be found in them, or the private improve- 
ment of the mind. The Rich and Great make efTorts 
of their own in these lines, and become candidates 



188 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

for public applause. This is by no means to be 
deprecated when the efforts made are such as to 
command respect as well as notice and attention. 
Let the works produced be admirable for their genius, 
or respectable for the labor and perseverance bestowed 
upon them, or the knowledge and capacity evinced 
by them, and nothing can be more commendable in 
the Rich and Great than to produce them, nothing 
more calculated to strengthen the hold of these classes 
upon the classes below. But the opposite consequence 
follows, when the Rich and Great are paraded and 
panegyrized by a particular department of the peri- 
odical press as the authors of light and frivolous tales ; 
or when they are found exhibiting their indifferent 
accomplishments in collections of ephemeral verses, 
or in engravings from their drawing, not unfrcquently 
sold at bazaars on those pretexts of charity which 
stand so much in need of a charitable construction. 
Imperfect efforts in literature and art make a refined 
and innocent amusement for the Rich and Great, and 
as far as they go are cultivating : but publication 
needs to be vindicated on other grounds. 

But let amusements be as innocent as they may, 
and let society be as free as it may from ambition 
and envy, still, if the life be a life of society and a 
life of amusement, instead of a life of serious avoca- 
tions diversified by amusement and society, it will 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 189 

hardly cither attain to happiness or inspire respect. 
And the more it is attempted to make society a pure 
concentration of charms and dehghts, the more flat 
will be the failure. Let us resolve that our society 
shall consist of none but the gay, the brilliant, and 
the beautiful, — that is, that we will exclude from it 
all attentions towards the aged, all forbearance towards 
the dull, all kindness towards the ungraceful and un- 
attractive, — and we shall find that when our social 
duties and our social enjoyments have been thus 
sedulously set apart, we have let down a sieve into 
the well instead of a bucket. What is meant to be 
an unmixed pleasure will not long be available as a 
pleasure at all ' On n'aime guere d'etre empoisonne 
memo avec esprit de rose.' Nor is it in our nature 
to be durably very well satisfied with an end, which 
does not come to us in the disguise ehher of a means 
or of a duty. Duty being proscribed, the want of 
an aim will be felt in the midst of all the enjoyments 
that the choicest society can afford, and what was 
entered upon as an innocent amusement, will lose, 
in no long time, first its power to amuse, and next 
its innocence. The want of an object will be sup- 
plied, either by aiming at the advancement of this 
person or the depreciation of that — in which case 
the pursuit of social pleasure will degenerate into the 
indulgence of a vulgar pride and envy — or, (which 



190 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

is worse and more likely',) by merging the social 
pursuit in the vortex of some individual passion. 

It is upon the blank weariness of an objectless life 
that these amorous seizures are most apt to supervene ; 
and the seat* which pleasure has usurped from duty 
will be easily abdicated in favor of passion and guilt. 
Such is the ancient and modern history of what is 
called a life of pleasure, with some variations of the 
particulars from century to century, but with little 
difference in the result. When Berkeley cast up, 
under distinct articles of credit and debt, the account 
of pleasure and pain of a fine lady and a fashionable 
gentleman of the last century, he mentions some items 
which may now be omitted, — (drinking and quarrel- 
ling are not now the vices of men of fashion, nor 
amongst the women is gaming so prevalent as it once 
was,) but he also supposed the omission of some which 
are now to be placed in the head and front of the bal- 
ance sheet : — 

' We will set down,' he says, ' in the life of your fine lady, 
rich clothes, dice, cordials, scandal, late h .urs, against va- 
pors, distaste, remorse, losses at play, and the terrible distress 
of ill-spent age increasing every day. Suppose no cruel acci- 
dent of jealousy — no madness or infamy of love ; yet at the foot 
of the account you shall find that empty, giddy, gaudy, flut- 
tering thing, not half so happy as a butterfly or a grasshopper 
on a summer's day. And for a rake, or man of pleasure, the 
reckoning will be much the same, if you place listlessness, 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 191 

\ 

Ignorance, rottenness, loathing, craving, quarrelling, and such 

qualities or accomplishments over-against his little circle of 
fleeting amusements,' * 

Assuredly, in this day and generation, the partic- 
ulars which Berkeley was willing to pretermit, are no 
longer to be regarded as doubtful elements in the cal- 
culation. Laxity in respect of the cardinal female 
virtue is unquestionably the cardinal sin of fashionable 
society : and what renders it most offensive is, that it 
is a discriminating laxity. It is impossible to deny 
that the frailties of persons who, by means of their 
wealth, can surround themselves with a surpassing 
degree of splendor, meet with an extraordinary quan- 
tum of indulgence. Absolutions and dispensations of 
a certain kind are bought and sold ; and of two women 
taken in adultery, the one of whom riots in a profusion 
of riches and is lavish of costly entertainments, whilst 
•the other enjoys no more than an ordinary share of 
affluence, fashionable infallibility will issue, to the one 
its indult, and to the other its anathema. Many who 
contemplate at a safe distance the ways of the great 
world, will feel the injustice and baseness of the dis- 
tinction, even more sensibly than the immorality, 
pernicious though it be, of the looser proceeding. An 
indiscriminate indulgence might pass for an amiable 

* Alciphron, Dial. 2. 



192 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

weakness or an excess of charity. But if it be 
through a charitable spirit that the great and sump- 
tuous sinners are admitted into society, what shall we 
call that spirit by which the more obscure or indigent 
are expelled ? Society acts either in the one case with 
the cruelty of a tyrant, or in the other with the vile- 
ness of a parasite. It is true, that if the paramount 
interests of morality did not require that the rule of 
expulsion should be universal, there are some unfor- 
tunate and penitent creatures who might be very fit 
objects for a charitable exception : but these are 
precisely they who would have no desire to profit by 
it: on them society has no longer any boon to bestow; 
for they know that their place is in retirement, and that 
it is there they must seek their consolation and set up 
their rest. It is not by the humble, the pardonable, 
and the contrite, that admittance or restoration to 
society is sought, after one of these forfeitures ; it is 
only by the callous, the daring, and obtrusive — and it 
is they who succeed. 

Such are the unfavorable features of society 
amongst the Rich and Great; and were they to per- 
vade aristocratic life at large, instead of being, as they 
are, incidental merely to this set or that circle, it would 
not be easy for the aristocracy to hold their ground in 
the country. The sets and circles in question are, no 
doubt, from political and domestic connection, neces- 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 193 

sarily mixed up with better aristocratic society; and 
as the show and pretension which belongs to them 
obtrudes them more upon the world, they bring upon 
that better aristocratic society a measure of disgrace 
which is far beyond its deserts. For let us clear away 
this clever, showy, frivolous outside of the aristocracy, 
and there will be found beneath it a substance as 
different from what might be expected as the old oak 
which is sometimes discovered beneath a coat of 
whitewash. And not only do the more favorable fea- 
tures prevail with the larger portion of the aristocracy, 
but they prevail most with the younger portion, and 
are therefore more full of hope and promise. The 
circle of the idle and the dissolute is a narrowing 
circle. The circle of the grave and religious, the 
active and instructed, is a widening circle. That one 
improvement which is the improvement of all others, 
— improvement in education, — is reaching the higher 
classes at last, though by slow degrees and with 
difficulty; for pedantic prejudice is of all prejudice the 
most obstinate. The improvement at present tends 
perhaps more to ambition and attainment than to the 
elevation of the mind ; but more than one example 
has shown that this is not an inevitable inferiority of 
schools and colleges; and a higher order of school- 
masters will, in time, effect by personal influence what 
mere tuition is utterly inadequate to accomplish. 
13 



194 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

The better training of our aristocratic youth at 
schools and colleges, is followed by better conditions 
of life in its outset and progress. It is expected of 
almost every young man that he should embark in 
some career, if not professional, then political; and 
a political career, even to those who do not hold 
office, is a much more serious thing than it used to 
be. The days of dilettante politicians are well nigh 
past. A member of parliament can no longer subsist 
upon a stock of great principles and an occasional 
fine speech. Public business consists now of dry 
detail in enormous masses; and he who is called 
upon to deal v/ith it, is constrained to take upon 
himself some moderate share, at least, of the infinite 
drudgery by which the masses are broken down. 
This is a wholesome element in the lives of our 
aristocratic youth; and if they shall aspire to a 
prominent position in political life, they must undergo 
an amount of labor in itself enough to entitle to 
respect the man who, not being in want of bread, 
shall submit to it from an impulse of no unworthy 
ambition. 

Besides the discipline of hard labor, there is another 
to which a man in a prominent public station must 
submit himself, — the discipline of obloquy and public 
reproach. There is no discipline by which strength 
is more tried, none by which it is more cultivated 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 195 

and confirmed if the trial be borne with- temper, 
fortitude, and self-reHance, and with a disregard of 
all ends which are not public as well as personal. 
It is in the strength of silence that such trials are 
often best encountered : for silence has a marvellous 
force and efficacy in rebutting slanders ; being felt 
to be what it almost always is, the attribute of a 
clear conscience and of self-respect. Above all, let 
persons in a high • station beware of defending them- 
selves in the press, or responding to challenges there 
made. They will lose more in pleading to that juris- 
diction, than they could possibly gain by a favorable 
issue, even if a favorable issue were to be expected. 
But there is no such thing as a favorable issue in 
such an encounter. A controversy with the press 
in the press, is the controversy of a fly with a 
spider. 

The good repute of the Rich and Great, as of 
others, is endangered much more by not attending 
to just reproaches, than by disregarding those which 
are unjust. Not, therefore, by descending into the 
arena and hustling those by whom they are hustled — 
not by writing and reclaiming when babblers and 
scribblers assail them, let the aristocracy approve 
themselves — not by jealous assertions or angry ap- 
peals, but by silence and works. Let those of them 
who regard themselves as elected and ordained to 



196 THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 

act from a vantage-ground for the good of their 
country and their kind, demean themselves accord- 
ingly, using those transmitted weapons which are 
tempered by time, though the handling of them be 
by circumstance, — or, far better, those which make 
no account of time, but are sent with their perennial 
aptitudes direct from the armory above, — the breast- 
plate of righteousness, the sword of the Spirit, and 
the shield of faith. By charity, by munificence, by 
laborious usefulness, by a studious and not merely 
Epicurean cultivation of literature and the arts, by 
that dignity which sees not itself, by a maintenance 
of their Order as a national institution, for patriotic 
purposes, not fol' individual aggrandizement ; and, 
lastly, by standing apart, both in social life and in 
political, from that portion 'of their Order, however 
distinguished by rank or wealth, or useless and per- 
nicious talents, whose follies or vices or selfishness 
or pride tend to bring the whole into contempt ; — 
by holding on in this high and constant course, the 
aristocracy of this intellectual country, which was 
once, and after a sleepy century is now again, a 
pre-eminently intellectual aristocracy, will fulfil its 
appointed purposes, giving a support, not to be dis- 
pensed with, to that social fabric of which it may 
well be accounted the key-stone ; and sustaining, 
peradventure, for so long as the good of mankind 



THE WAYS OF THE RICH AND GREAT. 197 

may require it to be sustained, that strength by which 
England is enabled at this instant time to look out 
from the shelter, which tlie winds and waves of a 
thousand years have scooped out for her, and see in 
safety the disastrous wrecks which are strewn about 
on every side, through the pride of aristocracies in 
times past and the present madness of the nations. 



THE END. 



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